Astrophysicists have investigated the stability of planetary orbits in binary star systems, where two stars orbit around each other.
The orbits of stars in binary systems are often affected by the gravitational pull of passing stars in young stellar nurseries systems which, in turn, can have an effect on the conditions in which planets form and evolve in the binary system.
Researchers in the University of Sheffield’s Department of Physics and Astronomy wanted to know whether the these encounters reduce the fraction of stable planets over time.
However, in a study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, they have shown that, overall, planetary orbits tend to remain stable.
While encounters with passing stars can make some systems less stable, they make others more stable, so the effects cancel each other out.
Dr Richard Parker, who led the study, said: “Some binary star systems can never host stable planetary systems, and so the study suggests that the crucial factor for determining how many stable planets exist in the Universe is the total number of binary star systems created in the early stages of star formation.”
The paper’s authors include a number of University of Sheffield graduates who made contributions as part of their undergraduate research projects in astrophysics.
A video abstract of the paper has been created by Helena Gibbon, a Science Communication MSc student at the University of Sheffield, and can be watched on YouTube.
The University of Sheffield students and graduates who did work for the study are Harry Ballantyne, Tore Espaas, Bethan Norgrove, Bethany Wootton, Benjamin Harris, Isaac Pepper and Rosie Dommett. Richard Smith also contributed while an undergraduate at Liverpool John Moores University.