WASHINGTON: Researchers from the University of Utah set out to demonstrate that despite current beliefs, rocky planets like our own Earth could in fact form encircling two stars, creating the kind of twin sunsets witnessed in ‘Star Wars.’ Previously, only gas-giants, devoid of life, were thought capable of forming under such conditions, yet these new findings suggest solid planets in this arrangement are not only out there, but may exist in abundance.
In a statement, Ben Bromley, an astrophysicist with the University of Utah, and Scott Kenyon from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, said their study concluded that “Tatooine sunsets may be common after all,” and that according to their scenario, “planets are as prevalent around binaries as around single stars.”
A spinoff of initial work with the reclassified dwarf planet Pluto and its major moon Charon, the pair’s interest was sparked by the binary arrangement of the four additional planets orbiting each. In this study, the team used mathematical models to work out the story of how planetesimals, rocks the size of asteroids that bind together to make planets, form around binary stars.
What they found was that these growing rock clusters rely on oval orbits to avoid collisions that would otherwise destroy the budding planet. This is in contrast to the orderly, concentric circles followed by planetismals circling a single star, naturally positioned to avoid crashes.
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