Where Are the Planets With Two Suns? Einstein May Have the Answer

Where Are the Planets With Two Suns? Einstein May Have the Answer

General relativity helps explain the lack of planets around tight binary stars by driving orbital resonances that eject or destroy close-in worlds. This process naturally creates a “desert” of detectable circumbinary planets. Among the more than 4,500 stars known to host planets, one trend stands out as especially puzzling. Nearly all stars are expected to [...]

Research Reveals Why Tatooine Planets are Rare

Why are planets rarely found orbiting a pair of stars? UC Berkeley and American University of Beirut physicists find that general relativity makes the orbit of a tight binary pair precess. As the orbit shrinks because of tidal effects, the precesion increases. Eventually the precession matches the orbital precession of any circumbinary planet, creating a resonance that makes the planet’s orbit wildly eccentric. The planet either gets expelled fr…

Tatooine exoplanets are oddly rare, and we finally know why