If you don’t mind lots of sand, high temperatures and well…
that’s about it, then you might be excited to hear about the
idea that a planet like Tatooine could possibly exist in
reality. Io9.com reports about Ryosuke Kita of Northwestern
University, who recently presented at the Astrobiology Science
Conference 2008 about the likelihood of a Tatooine-type planet
in a nearby solar system. Of the 200 or so star systems where
we’ve found planets, about 20 percent are binary systems, and
that number should go up as we find more, since about half of
all main-sequence stars are binaries. Kita’s calculations show
that gravity from a second star will perturb an Earth-like
planet’s orbit to the point of making its climate uninhabitable.
The key, he says, is that the planet can’t be alone — it needs a
nearby gas giant to help stabilize its orbit, and allow a
climate that could support life. According to the StarWars.com
Databank entry: Tatooine’s silicate surface reflects the light
of its suns so intensely that legends