Are There Other Earths Out There? Astronomers’ First Clues to an Answer Date Back 100 Years

kids.frontiersin.org Of all the questions that science might hope to answer, few excite people more than “is there life on worlds other than our Earth, and, if so, do any alien creatures possess intelligence similar to that of human beings?” But how can we find rocky Earth-like worlds that orbit around stars other than our Sun? Remarkably, the first astronomical evidence that such worlds exist dates back 100 years! This evidence involved observation of something called a “white dwarf” star, which is the type of star that our Sun will become five billion years from now. Studies of white dwarf stars have shown that rocky worlds with compositions similar to that of Earth are common throughout our Milky Way galaxy. Thus, future prospects are bright for finding rocky planets suitable for hosting life.