Binary Planetary Systems: The Key to Searching for Life on Other Planets

2023-11-30 12:30:29
A research team from the British University of Exeter announced that binary planetary systems are easy to form from a physical point of view, and that they might be one of the most important targets for the search for life on other planets due to their unique nature. To reach these results, which were published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, researchers conducted several sets of simulations on 100 planetary systems expected to exist in our galactic environment or in other galaxies. The simulations analyzed the formations of rocky planets in systems consisting of 2 To 5 primary planets. A binary planet is a term used to describe two bodies orbiting around each other, both of which have planetary masses. The two planets usually orbit around a common center of mass located between both bodies. The solar system has a close model, Pluto and Charon, but they are considered binary dwarf planets, not binary planets. It is believed that this type of planetary system usually arises from catastrophic collisions in ancient times, where two planets collide and break apart each other, and then the fragments come together once more to build two planets that orbit around each other. This is also the mechanism of the formation of the Earth-Moon system and the Pluto and Charon systems. The following video from the authors of the study explains how binary planets arise: Warm worlds. According to the study, the researchers found that the possibilities for the formation of binary planets are greater than scientists previously thought. In addition, the researchers revealed that the two planets are gravitationally linked to each other to the point that it causes the temperature inside each of them to rise. This consequently raises the temperature of their surfaces, which means that there might be a planet in a region far from the star it orbits, but it still has a moderately hot atmosphere, due to its gravitational interaction with the planet it orbits with. One of the most famous examples of this situation is Jupiter’s moon Ganymede, where Jupiter’s gravity affects it in a way that makes it hotter. Therefore, scientists believe that it contains beneath its icy surface a warm water ocean, even though it is located at a distance from the sun five times greater than the distance between Earth and the sun. One example that scientists are currently interested in in this range is Kepler 1708b, a Jupiter-sized planet discovered in 2011 orbiting a sun-like star located regarding 5,600 light-years from Earth. In 2021, a study was published in the journal Nature confirming, following an analysis of data issued by NASA’s Kepler space observatory, that Kepler 1708b is a binary planet, around which another planet the size of Neptune orbits. Last July, a team led by scientists from the Astrobiology Center in Madrid, Spain, confirmed that the emerging star system PDS 70, located 400 light-years from Earth, has two Jupiter-sized protoplanets that take the same orbit and are believed to be in the same orbit. At some point they may orbit each other.
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