Planet found with three stars

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utilae
Cosmic Dragon
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Planet found with three stars

#1 Post by utilae »

Planet found with three stars:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/co ... 98,00.html

Scientists knew of multi star systems before, but had never known of a multi star system with a planet.

kess
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#2 Post by kess »

Whoa!

1. For those who has full text access (e. g. diving the Net from witihin a uviversity), here is a direct link to the article in Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 ... 03856.html [Konacki, Maciej. 2005. “An extrasolar giant planet in a close triple-star system”. Nature; 436 (14 July); 230–233.]

2. I'm not sure about the details with FO. How are, for instance, the starsystems created and layed out? I mean, the percentage of systems without planets (see quote from the Australian news article below) and... perhaps planetary systems with three suns, and perhaps even more.
The Australian wrote:Binary and multiple stars are quite common in the solar neighborhood, and in fact outnumber single stars by some 20 per cent.

guiguibaah
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Systems

#3 Post by guiguibaah »

As far as I know the game is segmented into systems. For the 0.2 build each system has a star, and almost all stars have planets.

For future builds, the creation of systems with two or three (or even no) stars would not be all that difficult. The only challenge would be the graphical display of the stars on the galaxy map and the stars on the top right corner when the planetary slide is opened.

Perhaps in the future some special distinctions can be given to these multi-starred planets.

A planet in a system with 3 stars might almost always contain a special... a planet in a system with no stars might be only visible until it is discovered later on in the game.

Some ideas to throw around...
There are three kinds of people in this world - those who can count, and those who can't.

Carbon Copy Man
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#4 Post by Carbon Copy Man »

I can't even imagine how a planet could manage an orbit when faced with all that bizarre gravity, unless it was moving in an 8 cycle.

Although that article kind of makes it sound like it's actually a single-star system within a three-star cluster.


Are there plans for making no-star systems?

That would seem utterly bizarre to me... But so would the concept of a three-star system with a colonisable planet. o_O

Robin J. Cartwright
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#5 Post by Robin J. Cartwright »

Carbon Copy Man wrote:I can't even imagine how a planet could manage an orbit when faced with all that bizarre gravity, unless it was moving in an 8 cycle.
It's not that different from the moon orbiting around Earth while we both orbit around the sun or both the earth & jupiter orbiting around the sun. The planet in question orbits around the largest star in the system, not all three stars. It's close enough to the star that it's influence on the planet is greater than the influence of the other two stars. The other two stars orbit around each other and around the largest star. Theoretically it's possible for a planet to orbit around two or more stars so long as the stars are close enough together and the planet far enough away. It would basically orbit around the stars' common center. No such planets have been found, but that may be because our method of detection makes it very difficult to detect such planets. 8 cycle orbits are unstable and wouldn't last long.

Carbon Copy Man
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#6 Post by Carbon Copy Man »

Well, you make an awfully good point.
8 cycle orbits are unstable and wouldn't last long.
Indeed. That's why it seemed unlikely to me.

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