Its possible that it coukd orbit both, right around the outside or in a figure eight. This may not be stable though and we could get flung out into deep space!
What a great question pooger12 and what an interesting answer Elizabeth! I had heard of binary stars before (when two stars orbit a common centre of mass), but I had never thought about what planets of these star systems actually orbit. It’s funny because binary stars are apparently really common and I guess we get so used to the idea of just one star, our sun.
There is some really cool stuff in this question.
Look up Kepler’s Laws in wikipedia to understand a single orbit.
THEN look at Langrangian Point.
There are points where things don’t go round, they can just stay still. So you could get a case where a planet between two starsjust got “caught” in between the two. Imagine that no seasons and the planet in constant star light. Not a good recipe for the creation of life as we know it.
Its possible that it coukd orbit both, right around the outside or in a figure eight. This may not be stable though and we could get flung out into deep space!
It is possible though, and planets have been found that orbit two stars, like this one :https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/news/kepler-16b.html
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What a great question pooger12 and what an interesting answer Elizabeth! I had heard of binary stars before (when two stars orbit a common centre of mass), but I had never thought about what planets of these star systems actually orbit. It’s funny because binary stars are apparently really common and I guess we get so used to the idea of just one star, our sun.
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There is some really cool stuff in this question.
Look up Kepler’s Laws in wikipedia to understand a single orbit.
THEN look at Langrangian Point.
There are points where things don’t go round, they can just stay still. So you could get a case where a planet between two starsjust got “caught” in between the two. Imagine that no seasons and the planet in constant star light. Not a good recipe for the creation of life as we know it.
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I think the other scientist have answer this very well…
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