Exocomets may be as common as exoplanets

Thousands of potential exoplanets and many stars with massive disks of gas and dust that suggest planets are forming have been found. However, not much of the stuff intermediate between dust and planets, such as asteroids, planetesimals and comets have been detected. UC Berkeley and SSL astronomer Barry Welsh has looked closely at a number of stars with dust disks and found evidence that they also have comets. Read more.