Recent findings from the European Space Agency's Gaia telescope ... The researchers knew WDJ0551+4135 had a strange composition, a mass twice that of the average white dwarf and an age that ...

Stock image: An illustration of a white dwarf star in space. Stock image ... rare among the DBA [white dwarfs with a mixed surface composition of hydrogen and helium] population," the researchers ...

Analyzing data from the Gaia space mission in 2019 ... When these stars collide to form the white dwarf, it changes the composition of the star in a way that can allow the formation of floating ...

Crucially, no planets in our solar system have such a composition ... They discovered this white dwarf, and another one of a similar age, using an observatory in space called Gaia.