As our final frontier still remains largely unexplored, scientists have made an exciting and unusual discovery that resembles a planetary setup from the beloved Star Wars franchise.
Indeed, astronomers led by the University of Birmingham have discovered a planet orbiting at a 90-degree angle around two odd stars in a setup reminiscent of the twin-sun system of Luke Skywalker’s home planet of Tatooine, according to a report published by Phys.org on April 16.
Specifically, the exoplanet with an equally exotic name – 2M1510 (AB) b – orbits two young brown dwarfs, which refer to space objects larger than gas-giant planets but not big enough to be proper stars, which is only the second such dual-dwarf orbiting system found so far.
Discovering the twin-sun system
As it happens, the researchers have used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) when they made the surprising discovery of the ‘eclipsing binary,’ in which the brown dwarfs eclipse one another as seen from Earth.
At the same time, it is the first strong evidence of a ‘polar circumbinary exoplanet’ in stable orbit of a stellar pair ever collected, although its “theoretical and observational basis has been postulated before.” Commenting on the discovery, Thomas Baycroft, a PhD student at the University of Birmingham who led the study, said:
“We had hints that planets on perpendicular orbits around binary stars could exist, but until now we lacked clear evidence of this type of polar planet. We reviewed all possible scenarios, and the only consistent with the data is if a planet is on a polar orbit about this binary.”
In the words of the study’s co-author Professor Amaury Triaud, a “planet orbiting not just a binary, but a binary brown dwarf, as well as being on a polar orbit is rather incredible and exciting [and] shows what is possible in the fascinating universe we inhabit.”
Elsewhere, on humanity’s never-ending quest of finding life in outer space, scientists believe there could be some in our own solar system, as close as Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, although the life forms potentially existing there would probably be minuscule.
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