14 DAY TRIAL // Imagining what will happen to our solar system once the sun burns out is quite popular, though, obviously none of us, probably not even humanity itself will be around to witness it.
But while our sun has a few billion years left in it, other stars have already lived their life and are now enjoying retirement as white dwarfs.
As for what happened to the planets around those stars before they became white dwarfs, Hubble now has some answers.
Looking at two burned-out stars relatively nearby, just 150 light-years away, Hubble was able to observe the remains of rocky planets like our Earth in the atmosphere of the stars.
Pollution in the form of asteroid-like rocks was abundant in the atmosphere, suggesting that the planets around the stars and a possible asteroid belt, met their demise when the stars started expanding as red giants.
Normally, white dwarfs are made up almost exclusively of light material, at the surface, anything heavier sinks to the core.
The fact that rocky debris was found in the atmosphere suggests at the very least that the two star systems were capable of creating rocky planets.