How many Earth-sized exoplanets orbit binary star systems (two-star systems)? This is what a recent study accepted by Astronomy & Astrophysics hopes to address as an international team of researchers announced the discovery of three Earth-sized exoplanets in a binary star system approximately 190 light-years from Earth. This study has the potential to help astronomers better understand the formation and evolution of binary star exoplanets and what this could mean for finding life beyond Earth.
For the study, the researchers made several remarkable and new discoveries: the two M-type stars that comprise the binary system orbit very close to each other, along with two of the exoplanets orbiting one of the stars while the third exoplanet orbits the second star. M-type stars are smaller and cooler than our Sun, but astronomers have increasingly become interested in searching for habitable worlds orbiting these stars due to their extremely long lifetimes, estimated to be trillions of years. For context, the total lifetime of our Sun is approximately 10 billion years. Until now, exoplanets in binary star systems have only been observed to be orbiting a single star or both stars simultaneously, not orbiting both stars separately.
“Discovering three Earth-sized planets in such a compact binary system is a unique opportunity,” said Dr. Sebastián Zúñiga-Fernández, who is a research assistant at the Université de Liège and lead author of the study. “It allows us to test the limits of planet formation models in complex environments and to better understand the diversity of possible planetary architectures in our galaxy.”
While the data for this study was obtained by NASA TESS space telescope, future studies could be conducted using NASA’s much more powerful James Webb Space Telescope, while further enhancing scientific knowledge about binary star planetary formation and evolution.
How will TOI-2267 help astronomers better understand binary star exoplanets in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: Astronomy & Astrophysics, EurekAlert!
Featured Image Illustration Credit: Mario Sucerquia (University of Grenoble Alpes)
