BIRDS' cells do it, bees' cells do it. Now it seems planets do it too, splitting apart into daughter worlds in a process reminiscent of mitosis.
Last year, Stephane Charpinet at the University of Toulouse in France, and colleagues, noticed what appeared to be two planets slightly smaller than Earth hugging an old star about 4000 light years away (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature10631). The star had already gone through a bloated phase as a red giant, so the researchers suggested that the tiny planets, named KOI 55.01 and KOI 55.02, were the remnants of two Jupiter-sized worlds that had lost their atmospheres when the swollen star engulfed them, and fell towards the star as they lost energy through friction.
But that scenario did not make sense to Ealeal Bear and Noam Soker of the ...
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