If a real Captain Kirk ever blasts off for other stars in search of rocky planets like ours, he may find lots of strange new worlds whose innards actually bear no resemblance to Earth’s.
A smattering of heavy elements sprinkled on 23 white dwarf stars suggests that most of the rocky planets that once orbited the stars had unusual chemical makeups, researchers report online November 2 in Nature Communications. The elements, presumably debris from busted-up worlds, provide a possible peek at the planets’ mantles, the region between their crust and core.
“These planets could be just utterly alien to what we’re used to thinking of,” says geologist Keith Putirka of California State University, Fresno.
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