'Wide-set' twin stars can drive dirtball companions WILD, insist boffins
Astrophysicists researching planets within the systems of binary stars - where one star orbits another - have found that the further apart the stellar twins are, the more their planetary systems are susceptible to violent disruptions. In simulated scenarios, distant binary star systems flung away the planets under their …
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Binary Stars
Heck, I remember running a simulation of such a gravitational system like that, back in the mid-1980s, on an IBM XT class machine, which shows that the planets could get flung out of the system.
Dave
Re: Binary Stars
That's what I was thinking, this hardly sounds cutting-edge so what's new about it? Is there something subtle that means this isn't just a simulation of masses under gravity?
I seem to remember that this was given as the reason why binaries were thought not likley to have companion planets.
Re: Well...
Perhaps one inhabitable one is coming our way soon.
Re: Well...
Hardly... There are binary systems with planets. There is even some evidence that our own system was, too. There are even quad-core systems.
I want to know how planets formed in such disruptive systems in the first place. Perhaps the stellar companions wandered in, did their damage, and then were flung back into the depths of space. Either way, it seems there ought to be plenty of rogue stars and planets hurtling through the void, just looking for our very own home. Forget those stinkin' Earth orbit intersecting asteroids. We should all stay awake at night worrying about the next planet that is planning to hit us.
Re: Well...
Long before Tattooine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightfall_(Asimov_short_story_and_novel)
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