(June 3, 2014 at 2:08 pm)max-greece Wrote: The reason it was thought that rocky planets couldn't exist so early in the universe isn't merely the availability of metals (heavier elements) but profundity. A lot of massive stars have to collapse for there to be a chance of sufficient amounts to be caught under gravitation to form a planet. Remember that when a star explodes it does so in all directions and at high speed. What you need is overlays of exploded metals from multiple stars to gather in a sufficiently small area to be caught up and combined into a planet.
That, was considered unlikely until now. Obviously somewhere along the line we got something wrong. That's why it is a surprise.
It may well be unlikely - we don't know how uncommon such planets are yet.
