

Kepler telescope identifies ancient solar system - SwellJoe
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-birmingham-31002598

======
simonh
It would be interesting to find out whatthe relative abundance of elements is
in a system like that. It's materials will have been through fewer generations
of stars, so I'd expect heavier elements to be less abundant than in our
system but I've no idea how much less and whether that might limit the
possibility of the evolution of life.

~~~
amoruso
The metallicity is listed as -0.55 [1].

Metallicity is on a logarithmic scale [2], so that's about 58% as many heavy
elements as our solar system.

That seems freakishly high for a star that old. That might be the only reason
it has planets at all. There aren't any heavy elements to make planets with in
most stars that age.

[1]
[http://exoplanet.eu/catalog/kepler-444_c/](http://exoplanet.eu/catalog/kepler-444_c/)
[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallicity](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallicity)

