THE HOME WORLD OF LUKE SKYWALKER

MIGHT NOT BE SO FARFETCHED AFTER ALL

LOTS OF TATOOINE-LIKE
PLANETS AROUND
BINARY STARS MAY BE
HABITABLE
News/ Astronomy
By James R. Riordon
JANUARY 24, 2023 AT 10:00 AM

PRESENTED BY
Joshua Labrador
SEATTLE — LUKE SKYWALKER’S HOME PLANET IN STAR WARS IS
THE STUFF OF SCIENCE FICTION. BUT TATOOINE-LIKE PLANETS IN
ORBIT AROUND PAIRS OF STARS MIGHT BE OUR BEST BET IN THE
SEARCH FOR HABITABLE PLANETS BEYOND OUR SOLAR SYSTEM
What is a Tatooine like Planet?
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.
 In the "Star Wars" universe, ice, ocean and desert planets burst from the
darkness as your ship drops out of light speed. But these worlds might be more
than just science fiction.
Some of the planets discovered around stars in our own galaxy could be very
similar to arid Tatooine, watery Scarif and even frozen Hoth, according to NASA
scientists.
Sifting through data on the more than 4,100 confirmed alien worlds, scientists
apply sophisticated computer modeling techniques to tease out the colors, light,
sunrise and sunsets we might encounter if we could pay them a visit.
Some of these distant worlds are even stranger than those that populate the
"Star Wars" films. And others are eerily like the fictional planets from a galaxy
far, far away.