Were there ever two suns in the sky?

Speaking of the sun, we all know since we were little that there is only one sun in the sky. This is common sense and we have never doubted it. However, the latest astronomical research has found evidence that there may be more than one sun when it was born 4.6 billion years ago.

Many viewers have seen "two suns" in the movie series "Star Wars". Tatooine, the home planet of the Skywalker family in the film, is a binary planet, which means that two suns can be seen there.

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In the movie, young Luke Skywalker and his robot saw the classic scene of two sunsets on the planet Tatooine, which was spectacular. Although this is a fictional planet, in reality, humans have discovered a planet orbiting a pair of stars. It is located in the Milky Way, 200 light-years away from the Earth. It was discovered by the Kepler probe on September 15, 2011. This planet is very similar to the fictional planet Tatooine in "Star Wars". Astronomers named it "Kepler-16b".

The distance between it and the star it orbits is three-quarters of the distance between the Earth and the Sun. Its size is similar to that of Saturn. It is the first planet with two suns discovered by humans. So far, a total of 21 planets with two suns have been confirmed, and this number is likely to increase as observations continue and deepen.

Astronomers have discovered that "double-sun planets" like Kepler-16b are actually common in the vast Milky Way. They have inferred that the sun also had a brother in its early formation. If this is true, what did this brother of the sun look like? Where did it go later?

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In the vast starry sky, about 80% of the stars are very close to their neighboring stars. They orbit each other. These stars bound together by each other's gravity are called binary stars. The two stars that make up a binary star are called sub-stars. The brighter one is called the primary star, and the dimmer one is called the companion star. The brightness of the primary star and the companion star can be slightly different, or very different.

If binary stars are so common, why do we only see one sun in the sky instead of two?

Astronomers are studying stellar nurseries. Deep in the Perseus clouds, in the densest gas regions, stars are being born. Astronomers call them "cocoons." In this place, no sun-like star is born alone. If every sun-like star has a twin, then maybe our sun has one, but in fact, it doesn't. Maybe in the sun's "stellar nursery," the following is happening:

4.5 billion years ago, in a stellar nursery, hundreds of giant incubation cocoons were busy giving birth to stars, and one of the new babies was our Sun. As the Sun was circling in the dust, another star, the Sun's companion, came into view. Unfortunately, a giant cocoon happened to pass by, and its huge gravity pulled the Sun's twin sister out of its cosmic cradle and threw it into the vast universe.

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For the Sun, the more likely scenario is that the two stars separated and were thrown in two different directions in our Milky Way. Now they may be millions of kilometers apart. There is no way to tell which star in the night sky is the companion star of our Sun, or the former companion star. It is possible that we will never see it again. However, this does not prevent humans from living healthily under the sun.

Source: CCTV Science and Education

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