The many fans of the Star Wars saga have reason to rejoice with the discovery of a system similar to the one Tatooine is part of. It has two stars and is located about 1,000 light years away.
In the journal Nature Astronomy, a team of researchers publishes their discovery: that of a two-star system called « SDSS 1557 » and located about 1,000 light years from us. If discovering this type of system is not uncommon, those discovered so far only hosted cold and gaseous planets, not rocky bodies as is the case here.
The only exception known to all is fictional, it is the system of which Tatooine is a part, a desert and overheated planet presented in the Star Wars saga. This newly discovered system is therefore composed of rocky debris orbiting two stars, a white dwarf and a brown dwarf.
» We know of thousands of SDSS 1557-like binaries, but this is the first time we’ve seen asteroid debris. “, explains in a press release Steven Parsons of the University of Valparaíso (Chile), co-author of the study. As the researchers explain, if we do not yet see the planets, this debris is the sign of their formation. As an example for us, in the solar system, the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter contains the discarded building blocks of the formation of Mercury, Venus, Earth or Mars.
» With the discovery of asteroid debris in the SDSS 1557 system, we have proof that a rocky planet formed from large asteroids “says Jay Farihi of University College London and co-author of the study.
This is a discovery that will allow researchers to understand the very complex phenomenon of the formation of rocky planets in binary systems. » The formation of rocky planets around two suns is complicated, because the gravity of the two stars pushes and pulls very strongly “says Jay Farihi.
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