The universe may have been building rocky planets almost from the start

The universe’s first rocky planets may have gotten their start astonishingly early — perhaps only 100 million years after the Big Bang.

Explosions of some of the universe’s first massive stars could have created isolated pockets rich enough in dust and elements like iron and carbon to form the building blocks of planets, a new computer simulation suggests. The simulation produced enough rocky building material to potentially make several Earth-sized planets, and there was water available in the young stellar system that could have made it to the planet just a bit later, researchers report August 19 in Astrophysical Journal Letters .

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