Double-Star Systems Can Be Dangerous for Exoplanets

Double-Star Systems Can Be Dangerous for Exoplanets

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Alien planets born in widely separated two-star systems face a grave danger of being booted into interstellar space, a new study suggests. Exoplanets circling a star with a far-flung stellar companion — worlds that are part of “wide binary” systems — are susceptible to violent and dramatic orbital disruptions, including outright ejection, the study found.

Such effects are generally limited to sprawling planetary systems with at least one distantly orbiting world, while more compact systems are relatively immune. This finding, which observational evidence supports, should help astronomers better understand the structure and evolution of alien solar systems across the galaxy, researchers said.