YosemiteSam
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Kepler Finds a Real Life Tatooine
Incredible discoveries from NASA’s Kepler space telescope just keep coming! This week, scientists found not one but two planets orbiting a binary star, that is, a pair or stars that orbit a point between them called a barycenter. Incredibly, one is even in the habitable zone. But don’t get excited about moving to a real life Tatooine just yet. Both planets aren’t themselves habitable, but that doesn’t make the discovery any less interesting or important.
It’s been less than a year since Kepler found the first circumbinary planet, that is a planet orbiting a binary star. That planet, Kepler-16b, was discovered last September. Finding another one in such short order suggests that circumbinary planets aren’t a rare phenomenon, and proves that more than one planet can form and persist in this stressful realm.
Complete Story
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Kepler Finds a Real Life Tatooine
Incredible discoveries from NASA’s Kepler space telescope just keep coming! This week, scientists found not one but two planets orbiting a binary star, that is, a pair or stars that orbit a point between them called a barycenter. Incredibly, one is even in the habitable zone. But don’t get excited about moving to a real life Tatooine just yet. Both planets aren’t themselves habitable, but that doesn’t make the discovery any less interesting or important.
It’s been less than a year since Kepler found the first circumbinary planet, that is a planet orbiting a binary star. That planet, Kepler-16b, was discovered last September. Finding another one in such short order suggests that circumbinary planets aren’t a rare phenomenon, and proves that more than one planet can form and persist in this stressful realm.
Complete Story
