Monday, March 16, 2020

How common are Tatooine worlds? | Space

We all know that iconic scene: Luke Skywalker staring forlornly — and perhaps wistfully — at the double sunset of his home planet, Tatooine .

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So if half the sunlike stars in the galaxy are in pairs, could those systems host Earth-like planets ?

For some time, it was thought that the complicated gravitational dynamics of multiple stars would prevent the formation of planets in the first place. But we now know there are two ways for a planet to find a stable home with multiple stellar parents. In the first case, if the binary stars are far enough apart, then a planet can orbit one of them safely, without any gravitational disturbance from its star’s sibling.

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Publisher: Space.com
Date: 2020-03-16T12:03:13 00:00
Author: https www facebook com spacecom
Twitter: @SPACEdotcom
Reference: (Read more) Visit Source



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