Just as we have grown accustomed to stories of increasingly small planets being discovered around distant stars, along comes a new study that ups the ante.
This week, for the first time ever, scientists have announced evidence of icy comets orbiting a sun-like star about 160 light-years from Earth. Consider them the first known exocomets.
The work will be published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The international team that worked on the observations were not able to see the comets directly. Instead, they used the European Space Observatory's ALMA radio telescope to measure low levels of carbon monoxide gas in a debris disk that...