Two asteroid belts for solar system's young twin

A nearby star has two rocky belts, an outer icy ring
and probably unseen planets, researchers say.

The near­by star Ep­si­lon Erid­a­ni has two rocky as­ter­oid belts and an out­er icy ring, mak­ing it a triple-ring sys­tem, as­tro­no­mers have found.

The in­ner as­ter­oid belt is de­scribed as a near-twin of the one in our so­lar sys­tem. The out­er as­ter­oid belt holds 20 times more ma­te­ri­al, as­tro­no­mers said, and the three rings’ pres­ence im­plies that un­seen plan­ets con­fine and shape them.

Ep­si­lon Erid­a­ni and its plan­e­tary sys­tem show re­mark­a­ble si­m­i­lar­i­ties to our so­lar sys­tem at a com­pa­ra­ble age, re­search­ers said.

It’s like “a time ma­chine to look at our so­lar sys­tem when it was young,” said Mas­si­mo Ma­ren­go of the Har­vard-Smith­son­ian Cen­ter for As­t­ro­phys­ics. Ma­ren­go is co-author of a pa­per on the find­ings, to ap­pear in the Jan. 10 is­sue of The As­t­ro­phys­i­cal Jour­nal.

Source: http://www.world-science.net/othernews/081027_eridani