Possible asteroids found outside our solar system

New Scientist : Although asteroids have been seen throughout our solar system, none have been discovered beyond it. The reason is probably that they are too small to be seen by current telescopes. Now, however, data from NASA’s Kepler space observatory may contain hints of extrasolar asteroids. Whereas one way to detect planets is by the dip in light that occurs when they transit in front of their parent star, asteroids are so much smaller that it would be difficult to observe any drop in brightness as they cross in front of the system’s star. So Michael Hippke of the Institute for Data Analysis in Neukirchen-Vluyn, Germany, and Daniel Angerhausen of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center combined observations from more than 1000 star systems and found dips in starlight about where asteroids would be expected to orbit. Furthermore, the numbers approximately match those in our own solar system. To confirm their findings, astronomers must wait for the launch of Kepler‘s successor, the European Space Agency’s PLATO spacecraft.