Tatooine is Luke Skywalker’s fictional home planet – with two suns. Researchers now have a new method to detect real planets of this type.
France – 245 light-years from Earth lies the exoplanet Kepler-16b. It is one of the planets that does not revolve around a sun, but around two stars – like the fictional home planet of Luke Skywalker in the world-renowned science fiction saga Star Wars. For the first time, researchers have now been able to observe the real planet from Earth with a telescope and detect it using the radial velocity method, reports the science magazine scinexx .
Space is a place where many secrets are still waiting to be discovered, explored and understood. Only recently could a water cycle on a so-called hot Jupiter be explored, on which it could even rain gemstones. Research into oxygen production on alien planets such as Mars is also making progress, but settlements outside of Earth are not yet possible.
A special feature of Kepler-16b is that it lies just inside the habitable zone of the orbit around its two stars. The planet with the two suns caused quite a stir when it was discovered in 2011. However, it is apparently not clear whether colonization would be possible at all, since the planet could possibly be a gas giant and temperatures of around -80 degrees Celsius prevail on its surface.
Tatooine planet has been known since 2011: now it could be observed
A French team of scientists has now succeeded in detecting planet Kepler-16b in its orbit around two stars through the influence of its gravity. So far this has not been successful. The double star with the so-called circumbinary planet was observed by means of a spectrograph from the observatory in Haute Provence in France. To put it simply, the scientists’ approach was to check whether the two stars in the center of the binary planet’s orbit were influenced by its gravity – the focus was on a slight wobbling of the stars.
Elaborate analyzes were necessary, but with them the research team was able to prove such a tumbling – even though the stars generate interference signals and the gravity of the planet acts on them only to a very small extent. So far, the existence of Kepler-16b could only be proven using the so-called transit method, which is only applicable if a planet moves in its orbit directly between its stars and the earth.
New detection method could form basis for discovery of other Tatooine planets
With the detection of this type of Tatooine planet Kepler-16b, similar planets with two or more suns that previously remained undiscovered may now be found. However, the fact that mankind will be able to look at two suns in the sky on one planet with this innovation in the distant future is still pure science fiction, at least for the moment. (mda) *Merkur.de is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA.
