Unexpected discovery of a planet orbiting two brown dwarfs

The image of Luke Skywalker standing on the planet Tatooine watching the sunset of 2 Suns is an immortal symbol in the 1977 movie " Star Wars ".

But today's world of space science has gone far beyond that imagination - not only have binary planets (planets orbiting two stars) been discovered, but recently, astronomers have also confirmed the existence of a planet orbiting two brown dwarfs - something that is neither quite a star nor quite a planet.

According to a research report published in the journal Science Advances, through the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope located in Chile, scientists have discovered a planet named 2M1510 (AB) b, about 120 light years from Earth - a relatively close distance in the cosmic scale. This could be a gas giant planet with a mass 4-5 times that of Earth.

Remarkably, instead of orbiting one or two stars like the Sun, planet 2M1510 (AB) b orbits two brown dwarfs - objects between stars and planets, not massive enough to start the thermonuclear process like a real star, but still much larger than planets. Each of these brown dwarfs has a mass 35 times that of Jupiter - the largest planet in the Solar System.

The planet's most unique feature is its polar orbit—an orbit that is nearly perpendicular to the plane of rotation of the pair of brown dwarfs. While planets typically orbit in the same plane as the celestial bodies they orbit, 2M1510 (AB) b takes a "deviant" path, like a satellite flying over Earth's north and south poles.

According to Mr. Thomas Baycroft - a PhD student in astronomy at the University of Birmingham (UK) and the lead author of the above study, no planet in the Solar System has a polar orbit.

Of the more than 5,800 confirmed exoplanets, only 16 are binary planets. And this is the first time such a planet has been discovered orbiting two brown dwarfs.

If the Tatooine sunset is a glorious combination of two golden suns, then for the hypothetical inhabitants of 2M1510(AB)b, the skyscape would be completely different.

Both brown dwarfs would be red and identical, but much fainter than the Sun, said Thomas Baycroft. Each brown dwarf in the Solar System has only about 4% of the Sun’s mass and shines with only 0.1% of its light.

A third brown dwarf also exists in the system, but it is too far away — about 250 astronomical units (AU), or 250 times the distance from Earth to the Sun — to have a significant influence on the central binary.

“This discovery is a wonderful demonstration of the incredible diversity of planetary systems,” said astronomer Amaury Triaud, co-author of the study. “They keep exceeding our initial predictions. That’s exciting, because it opens up endless opportunities for learning.”

According to Mr. Triaud, scientists have previously hypothesized the existence of exoplanets in polar orbits around binary star systems and this is the first solid evidence of this./.

(Vietnam News Agency/Vietnam+)

Source: https://www.vietnamplus.vn/phat-hien-bat-ngo-ve-mot-hanh-tinh-quay-quanh-hai-sao-lun-nau-post1033724.vnp