Second-Chance Planets

When a star explodes as a supernova, it’s bad news for any nearby planets. The shockwave blasts the planets to cosmic dust. But that act of cosmic destruction clears the way for new acts of creation: the birth of new planets. And a recent study suggests a way for the second-chance planets to take shape.
A supernova can form when a massive star can no longer produce nuclear reactions in its core. The core collapses, while the outer layers blast into space at up to a few percent of the speed of light. The collapsed core can form a neutron star. It’s up to a couple of times the mass of the Sun, but only a dozen miles or so across.
Astronomers have discovered small, rocky planets around a few neutron stars. There’s no chance that these worlds survived the explosions, so they must have formed afterwards.
One neutron star where astronomers thought they saw a planet is Geminga. It’s in the constellation Gemini, which is in the east at nightfall. The constellation is marked by its two brightes