Lots of Tatooine-like planets around

binary stars may be habitable

The home world of Luke Skywalker might not be so farfetched after all.
By James R. Riordon JANUARY 24, 2023 AT 10:00 AM

Many stars in the universe come in pairs. And lots of those should have planets
orbiting them (SN: 10/25/21). That means there could be many more planets
orbiting around binaries than around solitary stars like ours. But until now, no
one had a clear idea about whether those planets’ environments could be
conducive to life. New computer simulations suggest that, in many cases, life
could imitate art.

Earthlike planets orbiting some configurations of binary stars can stay in stable
orbits for at least a billion years, researchers reported January 11 at the
American Astronomical Society meeting. That sort of stability, the researchers
propose, would be enough to potentially allow life to develop, provided the
planets aren’t too hot or cold.
Of the planets that stuck around, about 15 percent stayed in their habitable zone
— a temperate region around their stars where water could stay liquid — most
or even all of the time.
The researchers ran simulations of 4,000 configurations of binary stars, each
with an Earthlike planet in orbit around them. The team varied things like the
relative masses of the stars, the sizes and shapes of the stars’ orbits around each
other, and the size of the planet’s orbit around the binary pair.
The scientists then tracked the motion of the planets for up to a billion years of
simulated time to see if the planets would stay in orbit over the sorts of
timescales that might allow life to emerge.
A planet orbiting binary stars can get kicked out of the star system due to
complicated interactions between the planet and stars. In the new study, the
researchers found that, for planets with large orbits around star pairs, only
about 1 out of 8 were kicked out of the system. The rest were stable enough to
continue to orbit for the full billion years. About 1 in 10 settled in their habitable
zones and stayed there.
Of the 4,000 planets that the team simulated, roughly 500 maintained stable
orbits that kept them in their habitable zones at least 80 percent of the time.
Summary
“The habitable zone . . . as I’ve characterized it so far,
spans from freezing to boiling,” said Michael Pedowitz,
an undergraduate student at the College of New Jersey
in Ewing who presented the research. Their definition is
overly strict, he said, because they chose to model
Earthlike planets without atmospheres or oceans.
That’s simpler to simulate, but it also allows
temperatures to fluctuate wildly on a planet as it orbits.
“An atmosphere and oceans would smooth over
temperature variations fairly well,” says study
coauthor Mariah MacDonald, an astrobiologist also at
the College of New Jersey. An abundance of air and
water would potentially allow a planet to maintain
habitable conditions, even if it spent more of its time
outside of the nominal habitable zone around a binary
star system.

Reflection
Astrophysicist Jason Wright from Penn State, who was not involved in
the work, believes that the prospect of stable and hospitable planets in
binary star systems is a pressing concern.
He claims that, at the time Star Wars was released, we had no
knowledge of any planets outside of our solar system and wouldn't
have for another 15 years. Now that we are aware of their existence
and orbit of these double stars.
Future investigations might use these simulations of planets orbiting
binary stars as a guidance, according to Wright. "There are a lot of
undiscovered planets in this group. There is no reason why we can't
pursue them, and research like this are likely demonstrating that it is
worthwhile to make an effort.