Polluted Dead Stars

Cool Worlds Lab guest Dr Sarah Ballard from MIT explains how observing dead stars (white dwarfs) can reveal the makeup of exoplanets and even exoplanetesimals! Be sure to follow Sarah on Twitter @hubbahubble and check out her website at http://www.drsarahballard.com.

::More about this Video::

► Farihi et al. (2013), "Evidence for Water in the Rocky Debris of a Disrupted Extrasolar Minor Planet": http://arxiv.org/abs/1310.3269
► Xu et al. (2014), "Elemental Compositions of Two Extrasolar Rocky Planetesimals": http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.4252
► Vanderburg et al. (2015), "A disintegrating minor planet transiting a white dwarf": http://arxiv...