Topic: Binary planets or something else?  (Read 981 times)

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Binary planets or something else?
« on: August 06, 2006, 12:33:29 pm »
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Using the European Southern Observatory's telescopes in Chile, astronomers have spotted a seven-Jupiter mass object paired to another 14-Jupiter-mass companion. Instead of orbiting around a star, however, the two planetary mass objects, or "planemos," are circling each other


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But some scientists argue that planethood shouldn't be bestowed based solely on mass, and that how an object was created should also be considered. Most known planets, including those in our solar system, form out of discs of gas and dust surrounding stars or brown dwarfs. As far as scientists can tell, the new planemo pair did not form this way.

Instead, scientists think the twins formed the same way that many binary star systems do, when a contracting gas cloud splits in two before condensing into a stellar core.


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