'Remarkable' Binary Stars Could Birth 3 Planetary Systems Hosting Life

Astronomers have observed a remarkable arrangement in a young binary star system which is giving birth to three separate systems of planets. The team also found within the three planet-forming disks of gas and dust, complex organic molecules that could, in the future, seed life on the planets that form. The team discovered that there is not one, or two, but three planet-forming disks in the double-star system designated SVS 13 and located around 980 light-years from Earth. Each star is surrounded by one disk of gas and dust that form the building blocks of planets, and there is also a larger disk surrounding the entire binary system. The larger outer disk has a spiral structure that is feeding matter into the individual disks, and in all of them, planetary systems could form in the future. University of Manchester researcher Ana Karla Díaz-Rodríguez led the investigation that uncovered these extraordinary results. She told Newsweek: "This system shows that there will be planets with two suns in the sky and maybe even planets that orbit only one of the stars and which have no nights for part of their year. "Can you imagine living on worlds like this?" Díaz-Rodríguez is co-author of the team's research, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal, which is the culmination of 30 years of work and represents the best description of a binary system during its formative stages ever produced. In the paper, the authors describe SVS 13 as a "remarkable" binary system. The two young stars, or stellar embryos, sit close together in a disk of gas and dust called the Perseus molecular cloud. In total these two stars have roughly the same mass as the sun. The team studied the composition of the gas, dust and ionized matter in the system identifying nearly 30 different molecules around both protostars, including 13 complex organic molecules that are precursors for life, seven of which have been detected for the first time in this system. Díaz-Rodríguez said that this means when planets form in SVS 13, around these two suns, the building blocks of life will be present. She added: "These complex molecules could seed many planets which form with the building blocks of life."

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Manchester University Professor of Astrophysics, Gary Fuller, told Newsweek: "When we think about a star being born, we generally picture one, isolated object. But the truth is that most stars form in multiple systems. "Imagine, for example, Tatooine, the fictional two-sun planet where Luke Skywalker from Star Wars was raised. The two suns are a binary system that formed together and our observations show the material out of which planets like Tatooine could eventually form." Díaz-Rodríguez tells Newsweek: "Whether one, two or three disks form depends on how the stars form. So the presence of three disks points to a very specific set of conditions in the cloud while this system is forming." The team made its discovery of this unique arrangement using three decades of observations from the Very Large Array (VLA) observatory in New Mexico and with new data collected by the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope— which is made up of 66 smaller antennas—based in the Atacama desert region of northern Chile. Díaz-Rodríguez concludes: "This is the first time that it has been possible to provide such a comprehensive and precise set of results from observations. This will help theoreticians refine their models of how these systems form."