Formation of the Kepler-444 Planetary System
c. 11.2 Billion years ago · Prehistoric
Approximately 11.2 billion years ago, a metal-poor star in what would become the Milky Way's thick disk formed with five sub-Earth-sized rocky planets, all orbiting within 0.08 AU of their host star. As of 2015, Kepler-444 represents the earliest known example of terrestrial planet formation, indicating that rocky worlds began assembling when the universe was less than 20 percent of its current age. Its age was determined through asteroseismology, measuring stellar oscillation frequencies from Kepler spacecraft photometry. The system establishes that conditions for rocky planet formation existed billions of years before the Sun and Earth formed.
Topics
cosmologystellar formationplanetary formationexoplanet detectionasteroseismology
Connected Events — 3 Connections
Kepler-444 formed 6.6 billion years before the Sun, demonstrating that rocky planet formation was possible in the early, metal-poor universe long before our solar system existed Formation of the Sun
Kepler-444 formed from gas containing heavy elements produced by earlier generations of stellar nucleosynthesis, though in far lower abundances than the Sun would later inherit First Heavy Elements: Birth of Stellar Nucleosynthesis
The detection of 51 Pegasi b in 1995 opened the field of exoplanet science that ultimately led to the Kepler mission's discovery of the Kepler-444 system Detection of Exoplanet 51 Pegasi b
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