Planet discovered in a triple star system

[vogon13]

Once you get a thick debris cloud, individual particles traveling inclined paths pass thru the mean plane of the material twice per orbit. They collide there every time (if debris is thick enough) and this is one of the few astronomical events that can occur 'rapidly' (relatively speaking).<br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>

 

[telfrow]

<i>Astronomers say more than a thousand planets might be lurking in our galactic neighborhood. That's the conclusion they reached in explaining the genesis of a giant planet discovered in July by Maciej Konacki, then at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. <br /><br />The planet was found inside a triple-star system called HD 188753, about 150 light-years from Earth. The alien world defied explanation because planets such as it should not be able to form a triple-star system. <br /><br />Now Simon Portegies Zwart of the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands and Steve McMillan of Drexel University in Philadelphia, believe they've solved the riddle. They say HD 188753 probably formed inside an "open cluster" of several hundred stars. <br /><br />They argue it is possible the planet first formed around the host star and then the star drew it into a tight orbit. Subsequently, a close encounter in the cluster hooked them up with the binary system. <br /><br />"Nature is always more crazy than we are; it invents things that we cannot envision at all," says Zwart. "I'm sure we will find more of these systems in the next few years." </i><br /><br />http://www.physorg.com/news8245.html <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <strong><font color="#3366ff">Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find and not to yeild.</font> - <font color="#3366ff"><em>Tennyson</em></font></strong> </div>

 

[bonzelite]

perhaps a solar system exists out there, somewhere, with a central sun --with nine or ten other stars-- like planets, orbiting it. it would literally be a "solar system" entirely comprised of suns.

 

[CalliArcale]

If you haven't already, look for the Isaac Asimov short story "Nightfall". I never read the book, and I'm told the movie stinks, but the short story was excellent. It's about life on a planet in such a star system. Night is extremely rare, but will shortly arrive for just a few hours due to a rare alignment in the multiple stars combined with a solar eclipse (IIRC). The protagonist is a scientist intending to set up an observatory to study the darkened sky -- while everybody else is fleeing for shelters, screaming in hysteria, and otherwise making dire predictions due to historical records of the calamities that befell in centuries past when night would fall. They've speculated that there are stars out there other than the ones that give them daylight, although the theories are dismissed by most of the public, and there are real concerns about how people will handle the darkness.<br /><br />SPOILERSPACE (highlight the blank area to see it)<br /><font color="#5D6F80" /><br />When night does fall, most of the population panicks -- they're all afraid of the dark. People set practically everything on fire in a desperate attempt to make light. Meanwhile, our aloof scientist friend finds a new terror during his observations. He'd steeled himself for darkness by making forays into pitch black caverns, but nothing prepared him for what he saw in the darkness. Their world is in the middle of a dense star cluster -- the sky is absolutely full of stars. In that moment, he abruptly realizes just how tiny and insignificant their world is, and how many other worlds there could be out there, and he goes mad.<br /></font /><br />END SPOILERSPACE<br /><br />It's not neccesarily plausible, but it's an interesting story all the same. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[mlorrey]

Well, the spoilsport would have to be whichever of the three has the longest period, which should be equal to or a fraction of the 2000 year time frame, to enable a triple opposition event. It becomes more likely if your habitable planet is a moon of a larger one, either a super-earth or a jovian class planet. It's a lot easier to hide three stars behind a larger disk than a smaller one. <br /><br />This was the trick in the Sci-Fi movie "Pitch Black" with Claudia Black and Vin Diesel, which had a similar once-in-a-long-time period of darkness on a planet. <br /><br />Assuming a red dwarf with a 200, 400, 500, 1000, or 2000 year period around a pair of yellow dwarf stars which would either be in close orbit around each other or at least 15 AU from each other. They would have to have an orbital period that also was an evenly divisible fraction of the 2000 year period.