My thoughts on the extragalactic planet found?

None of your theories are likely: they all assume that the star does contain heavier elements, when we know that it doesn't. Astronomers have theorized that planets are much less common in systems lacking heavier elements; perhaps they'll need to revise their theories.

I don't know what the no-heavy-elements, no-planets theory is based on, so I can't comment on that. Anyway, for further comments on this star/planet, I'll refer you to Phil Plait's blog - he usually goes into a little more depth than the mainstream media articles.

Hope that helps!

I don't know the theory behind how planets form, but by reading the article, it must be dependent on the existence of heavier elements...

This is interesting, but the lack of heavier elements shouldn't be surprising for such an old system (it would be at least 5 billions years older than our sun, since it's in the red giant phase of it's life...near the end).

Early stars should have been been made SOLELY of hydrogen (protons), then these stars should have formed heavier elements allowing for things like our solar system system to form...I would suspect that on the cycle of star birth, death, and rebirth, our solar system has to represent a 2nd to 3rd stage cycle:

The universe is 10-15 billions years old and star live to be about 10 billions years (I believe), so we are basically on the second round, but we could probably start seeing the 3rd cycle, so I hesitate to say which one we represent...you have to take 10-15 billions years old for what it is, an approximation.