World's With Two Suns Common

Astronomers using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope have found that twin-star systems are just as likely to be surrounded by dusty debris disks as ones with only a single star. Debris disks are made up of asteroid-sized rock chunks and other material that could be leftovers of planets that have formed in the system.

The majority of stars like our Sun have at least one stellar companion. Astronomers have theorized that planets could form with little trouble in two-star systems, called binaries, despite the more complex gravitational tugging. The new study provides strong observational evidence to support that idea.

A human gazing at a double sunset on a world with two Suns like Skywalker’s Tatooine might not find the scene so alien after all, Trilling said. “It would be kind of like what you see on Earth, but with an extra Sun following in the sky,” he said. “Maybe it’s a little hotter during the day.”


SOURCE:
Space.com

This was interesting, not very surprising to me, I always sort of
figured there would'nt be a big problem with planetary formation
and such around binary systems.


Comments, Opinions?

cool!

I wonder what "time" would be like for us if we had two suns. Obviously it would take longer to orbit. Would we age slower/ faster? or would there be no difference at all? would our days be longer/slower?

It would probably mean even longer winters for us bostonians

Just imagine... in a binary system, sunsets would be twice as romantic :-)

Do these systems just evolve? I mean, so many variables come into this - our own Solar system alone is funny enough with all its comets and asteroids, planets and planetoids and respective moons and satellites - what if there are TWO centers of gravity? And how far/close from each other can they get? I heard that if Jupiter had found the ignite button, this would be a binary system as well. Then again, I heard of twin stars that are so close to each other that they mix their plasmas (or whatever they are made of these days). Do we have a nice animated model to show what those systems could look like?

Because on the other hand, scientists so far have failed to simulate a basic system with three bodies of approximately the same size (except the naturally impossible triangle formation around a common center which only works with three bodies of the same weight and that allegedly improbable 8-shaped tracl... forgot the name, will look for it).

I'm just curious if the laws we know suffice to explain what we observe or if we have to postulate new laws to understand what we can't explain?

Interesting find, but the headline, that worlds with two suns are common, is misleading. The article is about the evidence that binary systems commonly have debris accretion disks and thus often could have planets. Binary systems are the oddity and not the norm. Worlds with a single sun are of a much higher probability than worlds with two suns due to the fact the there are far less binary star systems. Still, it is interesting to note that having a binary system does not necessarily interfere with the formation of debris disks as previously thought.

Originally posted by Terapin
Interesting find, but the headline, that worlds with two suns are common, is misleading.

The source articles headline was even worse 'World's with twin sunsets
more common'.

Binary systems are the oddity and not the norm.

Actually it's thought that binary systems outnumber single star systems,
I read an article about it a year or so ago on the same site that this
article is from.