The Earth revolves around one star, the Sun. And the other planets in the solar system, as the name implies, follow the path. But, of course, we are a very small part of the universe. Exoplanets orbiting two stars have been identified by scientists and even depicted in fiction, such as Tatooine, Luke Skywalker’s land in Star Wars.
Until then, recording these binary systems had been the furthest thing researchers had come to. However, perception may be about to change: astronomers at the University of Nevada in the USA may have found one or more celestial bodies orbiting three stars, the so-called About the triple planets. This possibility is described in a scientific article published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
You might be wondering: How do researchers “think” they’ve found a planet? Currently, there is no record of the body, but rather a major hypothesis derived from observations of the GW Uri star system, located 1,300 light-years from Earth. This system has three stars, but this is not even the most important information. An interesting fact is the disk of dust and gas – or rather, disks, in which there is a gap that divides it into two parts. The outer ring draws attention with its 38-degree inclination.
The disk of dust and gas is a common feature of young star systems that form planets, and researchers believe that the huge cut between the rings is the result of the birth of one or more planets in that space. Scientists assume that there is a gas giant with the mass of Jupiter, which will be in the first million years of its existence. If the information is confirmed, we will encounter the first known planet orbiting three stars.
But there is also an alternative hypothesis for the gap in the dust and gas cloud. Scientists at the University of Exeter, UK, Suggest That gravitational moment – the physical amount associated with the stars’ rotation – would have caused the disk to break. So, there is no planet. But US researchers argue that there is not enough evidence to support this idea. Observations made in the coming months by telescopes ALMA and VLT, both in Chile, could help get out of the predicament.
Scientists searched for other possible systems in which a planet could be orbiting three stars. They found GG Tau A, 450 light-years from Earth, but they’re still not completely convinced. So far, GW Ori is the only known system that appears to support the new landscape. In any case, results of this kind reinforce the hypothesis that planetary formation is common, leading scientists to believe that they can appear in any type of system – just look and see.
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