"David Knisely" wrote...
in message ...

Hi there. You posted:

The part i still don't get is the early "life" of this planet. Scientists
believe that before it came to be in the position it is today, before
it entered M4, its sun was a "Sunlike star." Now, our star is a
3rd generation star, correct?

A first or second (more likely) generation star would be considered
"sunlike" if it had a similar mass and surface temperature.

*Could* be a second gen. i suppose. If first gen. stars were huge
and, especially, if they were relatively short-lived, then there may
have been time for a second gen. star to form.

And yet we're saying that in about a billion years or less, a first gen.
star went supernova distributing enough complex elements to make a
second gen. star with stellar system of planets. Also in this time, all
but one of the planets (the one we've found) were destroyed when
the Sunlike star hitched up with a neutron star. And then the Sunlike
star reaches near the end of its life, the neutron star evolves into a
millisecond pulsar, the Sunlike star goes into white dwarf phase. And
all this happens in the agonizingly brief period of a billion years or so?

Naahhht !

Our Sun's lifetime is over 11 billions years. If the white dwarf was so
"Sunlike," how is it that it only lived for less than a billion years?

Clear skies
to you.
--
David W. Knisely
Prairie Astronomy Club: http://www.prairieastronomyclub.org
Hyde Memorial Observatory: http://www.hydeobservatory.info/

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happy days and...
starry starry nights!

--
Tender hearts wear crying mask,
With eyes and tears that burn,
From their spot on Mars they ask,
"When will they ever learn?"

Paine Ellsworth