From Pamela Reuben:

Re: Distant solar system forming from mysterious dust, scientists say (Jan. 11):It sounds like a newly forming solar system in which there was some HUGE collision of almost planet size ‘rocks. ’ That happened here with Mars. Apparently, three billion years ago, Mars looked just like earth, oceans, woods, ice-caped mountains, lakes, everything. It even had a magnetic field that was equivalent to earth’s magnetic field of today, a fact that kept deadly radiation from space from bothering anything evolving on the planet. The reason it had this wonderful magnetic field was because it had a moon that was very big and very close to the planet. Eventually that moon struck the top of the planet and killed everything on mars. I am sure there was plenty of dust thereafter and it sounds like maybe this is the kind of thing going on so far from here in the system of that star they are studying.