![]() īut gravity presents another steep barrier for binary star planets. How then do they exist? Are they rogue planets that the combined gravities of binaries capture into orbit when they pass by too closely? In 2021, scientists simulating the nature of protoplanetary disks around newborn binary stars published a more viable explanation: the disk’s gases, like wind, can drag and slow down high velocity particles and baby planets enough in certain zones to enable them to grow into planets. The fact of the matter is we’ve already found several planets in binary and even multiple star systems. Based on simulations, scientists think that even when baby planets a few hundred kilometers across form, their high velocities will likely fragment each other on collision. Instead of gently sticking on collision, they tend to break each other. The gravitational presence of an entire second star makes the disk particles orbit with much higher velocities. But this kind of large-scale accretion may not function for planets around binary stars, which have a hard time forming in the first place. Up to hundreds of these worlds collided and combined in the inner Solar System for about 100 million years until only four large bodies remained: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. ![]() In our Solar System, Moon-sized protoplanets are thought to have formed within a million years from slowly colliding dust particles in the disk of material orbiting the newborn Sun. Ample research suggests that Earth-sized worlds might have a hard time even forming in chaotic two-star systems. For it assumes that the way in which the planets formed in our Solar System is applicable to worlds around binary stars. It begs the question: could an Earth-sized planet in a favorable orbit around two stars support life? Single stars like our Sun aren’t the galactic norm at least half the stars in our Milky Way galaxy exist in pairs as binary stars. Even as next generation telescopes, including the JWST, aim to study atmospheres of such far-off worlds to assess their suitability to host life, our search for habitable worlds remains limited. Some of these exoplanets seem to be Earth-like, where surface conditions could sustain liquid water and possibly life as we know it. Our search for planets around other stars in our galaxy has led us to discover more than 5,000 worlds. Illustration of the planet TOI 1338 b, silhouetted by its two stars. ![]()
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