A new planet like Star Wars' Tatooine detected outside of our solar system may orbit two failed stars, scientists reported Wednesday.
The exoplanet 120 light years away takes an unusual path around two brown dwarfs, otherwise known as failed stars.
Researchers found in a new analysis, published in the journal Science Advances, that the motion of the brown dwarfs are changing which is less likely to happen if they circled each other.
'I wouldn't bet my life the planet exists yet'
The brown dwarf pair was first spotted years ago by scientists who noted at the time that the twins eclipse each other but the planet itself hasn't been directly seen yet. So more research is needed to figure out its mass and orbit.
"I wouldn't bet my life that the planet exists yet," said Simon Albrecht, an astrophysicist with Aarhus University who had no role in the new study.
Scientists know of over a dozen planets that orbit two stars like the fictional 'Star Wars' scorching desert planet Tatooine with double sunsets that Luke Skywalker calls home.
Probing these wacky celestial bodies can help us understand how conditions beyond our solar system may yield planets vastly different from our own, said study author Thomas Baycroft with the University of Birmingham.
Planets circling twin stars "existed in sci-fi for decades before we knew that they could even really exist in reality," he said.
