Alien planets found locked in close embrace

Giant worlds do a synchronized dance around a dying star

Two distant alien planets around a dying star have been discovered locked in the closest orbital embrace ever seen, a new study has found.

These two gas giant planets are bound by their mutual gravitational attraction, and are closer and tighter than any previously discovered set of planets.

"This is the tightest system that's ever been discovered, and we're at a loss to explain why this happened," said Caltech astronomer John Johnson, leader of the new study, in a statement. "This is the latest in a long line of strange discoveries about extrasolar planets, and it shows that exoplanets continuously have this ability to surprise us. Each time we think we can explain them, something else comes along."

The newly discovered pair is orbiting the massive dying star HD 200964, located roughly 223 light-years from Earth.

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It goes on to say "The gravitational tug between HD 200964's two planets, for example, is 3 million times greater than the gravitational force between Earth and Mars, 700 times larger than that between Earth and the moon, and four times larger than the pull of our sun on Earth."

How do they stay balanced like that?

reply to post by Pauligirl


If any of these "odd" recent discoveries show anything, to me, it is that all the old ways of thinking are going to have to go. We can no longer assume that "gravity" is only capable of acting the way we perceive it. I hope that came out clearly.

Thanks for this Pauligirl. I thoroughly enjoy all these new discoveries and the apparent rapid rate of them. So many of them challenge our current and accepted understanding of our universe it excites me. It seems like so much that we know is flawed and there's an awful lot of head scratching going around. The truth is out there and we're getting closer to it each day.

I can't wait until reality collides with our primitive understanding of the universe.
This is just the beginning.

We don't know anything........... This is like elementary cosmological studies of the cosmos. Interesting to say the very least. Good information.