Research Reveals Why Tatooine Planets are Rare

Research Reveals Why Tatooine Planets are Rare
By Matthew Williams (https://ift.tt/qVkEybS)

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 from the system or is engulfed by one of the stars.

February 10, 2026 at 06:18AM
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