The researchers combined their data with observations from
ground-based telescopes and concluded that the disk orbits the
pulsar at a distance of about a million miles (1.6 million
kilometers) and contains roughly the same mass as ten Earths.
Alexander Wolszczan is a professor of astronomy and astrophysics
at Pennsylvania State University in University Park. Wolszczan
was not part of the discovery team but took part in the
teleconference. He says that the debris disk almost certainly
formed after the supernova explosion, as no pre-explosion disk
could have survived a supernova. The finding fits in with his
1992 discovery of three planets orbiting a pulsar called PSR
B1257+12, the first planets of any type ever found outside our
solar system. Wolszczan says the new finding helps confirm a
scientific theory on planet formation. "Now we can more
confidently say that planets around pulsars are probably not
that uncommon at all," he said in the teleconference. These
pulsar planets are unlikely to harbor life, acco