“Star wars” planets with double suns discovered
This is what astronomers around william welsh of san diego state university report in the british journal "nature. The constellation is reminiscent of the fictional planet tatooine from the "star wars" movie saga, explained co-author josh carter of the harvard smithsonian center for astrophysics in a statement. "Once again, science is catching up with science fiction."
Under the double sun of tatooine lies the home of the main characters anakin and luke skywalker in the canvas tale. The two real new discoveries with the catalog numbers kepler-34b and kepler-35b are unsuitable for life, however – they are gas-shaped and rough like saturn. Kepler-34b orbits its two suns every 289 days, which in turn orbit each other every 28 days. Kepler-35b circles its home stars once in 131 days, revolving around each other every 21 days.
In both pairs of double stars, the individual stars resemble our sun. However, since the double stars temporarily cover each other, the radiation that reaches their planets also varies greatly. The two exoplanets were therefore allowed to go through chaotic weather capers, says welsh. "It would be like experiencing all four seasons many times a year, with enormous temperature fluctuations."
In september 2011, "kepler" researchers had already reported the discovery of a planet with two suns. At that time it was not yet clear whether it is a bizarre single case. "The environment of a pair of stars used to be considered too chaotic for the formation of planets," emphasized welsh, who presented the finding at the annual meeting of the american astronomical society AAS in austin, texas. Presumably there are millions of planets with double suns in our dairy. With a total of three such finds now, astronomers see a new class of planetary systems as established.
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