Tatooine-like planet discovered by NASA!

[rale626]

http://www.space.com/12963-tatooine-planet-2-suns-star-wars-kepler-16b.html

It's a real-life Tatooine. A spectacle made popular by the "Star Wars" saga ? a planet with two suns ? has now been confirmed in space for the first time, astronomers revealed.

Scientists using NASA's Kepler space telescope captured details of a giant planet in orbit around the pair of binary stars that make up the Kepler-16 system, which is about 200 light-years away.

It really is amazing when Science fiction becomes science fact.
What do you make of this?

 

[silver wolf009]

Seems cool, shame we're not trying to get there.

*Is still sour about the that whole thing.*

 

[Valagetti]

I can feel a familar feeling from Kepler16B, a familar and unique force, one that is like no other.

 

[Limecake]

Did they find it in a galaxy far far away?

I'm sorry I couldn't help myself.

I always find planets like these fascinating, too bad I'll never get to space travel to any of them.

 

[Nickolai77]

Quite an interesting article that, i didn't at first think there was of a reason to get all exited about a rocky planet in a binary system- both are fairly common in the galaxy.

Still, while it's probably a hot planet like Tatooine (given it orbits at 3/4 the distance as we do from our sun) i think there the similarities end. It's about the size of Saturn apparently, which means it will have enough gravity to give any human whom lands on it a very bad day.

Really, i'm looking forward until our telescopes become sensitive to pick up smaller, earth size planets. At the moment we keep finding gas giants.

 

[The Virgo]

Now all we need to do is invent a huge rocket so we can go there and tell people that these aren't the droids they are looking for.

 

[xXAsherahXx]

Damn!! Where's my ion accelerator?! I want to kill some Jawas

 

[the spud]

Why must HK-47 spawn so far away!?!

OT: How is that possible? I thought that it was nigh on impossible for a planet to form if there were 2 stars in a system (due to the unbalanced gravity creating an unstable orbit).

 

[scorptatious]

Of course we'd find a new planet RIGHT after we cut the space program.

Pretty damn cool none the less though.

 

[ShindoL Shill]

so...
is there a forest planet with bear-like humanoids?

Why must HK-47 spawn so far away!?!

OT: How is that possible? I thought that it was nigh on impossible for a planet to form if there were 2 stars in a system (due to the unbalanced gravity creating an unstable orbit).

maybe one of them is somehow orbiting the other?
or blame magic.
or the LHC.
OT: can they sense any

midichlorians?

 

[Frozen Donkey Wheel2]

Yeah, it's called a binary star system. If my high school semester of astronomy is anything to go by, they're nothing new.

 

[Tiger Sora]

It has two suns and no women. What the hell are we gona do with a planet made of sand!!!...... make sandpaper I guess.

 

[Amphoteric]

Yeah, it's called a binary star system. If my high school semester of astronomy is anything to go by, they're nothing new.

Yeah, this is almost exactly word for word what I was going to write.

Its nothing to get excited about...

Shame I don't have a pi button on my keyboard.

 

[Mrsoupcup]

Yeah, it's called a binary star system. If my high school semester of astronomy is anything to go by, they're nothing new.

Or Spore

OT: I was rather hoping to see Binary Red Giants.

 

[OldGus]

Really, i'm looking forward until our telescopes become sensitive to pick up smaller, earth size planets. At the moment we keep finding gas giants.

Umm... you might be waiting a long time. A lot of times, the planet is detected first by the star's wobble, then finding the planet is a game of "see the sun's light reflect off it when its outside of the sun's corona, which from this distance is HUGE!"

 

[GrimTuesday]

Quite an interesting article that, i didn't at first think there was of a reason to get all exited about a rocky planet in a binary system- both are fairly common in the galaxy.

Still, while it's probably a hot planet like Tatooine (given it orbits at 3/4 the distance as we do from our sun) i think there the similarities end. It's about the size of Saturn apparently, which means it will have enough gravity to give any human whom lands on it a very bad day.

Really, i'm looking forward until our telescopes become sensitive to pick up smaller, earth size planets. At the moment we keep finding gas giants.

Actually its thought to have temperature ranging between -70 and -100C. so really it would be more like Hoth. I think part of it might be because the stars are only about 60 and 25% the size/mass as our sun.

 

[Braedan]

You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.

We must be cautious.

 

[Iron Lightning]

Yeah, it's called a binary star system. If my high school semester of astronomy is anything to go by, they're nothing new.

Not true, the discovery here is of a planet in a stable orbit about a binary star system. While binary star systems are very common in the universe many scientists used to doubt that the gravitational mechanics of a binary star system could ever support planets.

Of course, this planet isn't anything like Tatooine. It can't support life as we know it, it's a (gas? this wasn't specified) giant planet probably with temperatures of -70C to -100C. This discovery only makes Tatooine's reality possible.

 

[Saltyk]

This is pretty cool. But I gotta wonder how it works. I always assumed that would be impossible as the planet would likely be pulled into one of the stars.

Yeah, it's called a binary star system. If my high school semester of astronomy is anything to go by, they're nothing new.

Yeah, this is almost exactly word for word what I was going to write.

Its nothing to get excited about...

Shame I don't have a pi button on my keyboard.

What is up with the capthcas using that black and white lettering? Last time I had a captcha I messed up because I couldn't tell what one of the white letters was supposed to be. Oh. And pi. Wow. You should have tried typing in 3.14159265. See where that got you.

 

[Neverhoodian]

Seems cool, shame we're not trying to get there.

*Is still sour about the that whole thing.*

Perhaps if we knew how to travel faster than the speed of light. As it stands right now, traveling to just about any star system would be terribly impractical (if not impossible) due to the sheer distance involved.

As for the planet itself, it doesn't surprise me at all. There's tons of binary star systems out there, so the odds of finding such a planet was extremely high. It's still interesting, though.