Artist's rendering of what HD 131488's inner planetary system might look like as two large rocky bodies collide. HD 131488 is located in the direction of the constellation Centaurus and is three times more massive and 33 times more luminous than our own Sun Using the Gemini South telescope in Chile, astronomers at UCLA have found dusty evidence for the formation of young, rocky planets around a star some 500 light years distant. But these potential extrasolar worlds are alien in an even more intriguing way… In the aftermath of collisions between planetary embryos around this star the researchers discovered that the dusty debris bears no resemblance to the planetary building blocks of our own Solar System.

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