Astronomers simulated 24 planets flying in the same orbit as pearls on a necklace.
Earth and 7 other planets rotate in the same solar system but move in separate orbits. However, other star systems may have 2, 3 or even 24 planets chasing each other in the same orbit around the host star, Popular Science reported on May 3 .
The number of planets sharing the same orbit around the host star can be up to 24. (Image: BBC).
Computer simulations by an international team of astronomers illustrate how more than two dozen planets could share the same orbits in research published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. This configuration can be stable for billions of years, even longer than the star they orbit, says lead researcher Sean Raymond of the Bordeaux Astrophysics Laboratory.
There are several examples of small objects in the same orbit . The Solar System has several odd orbits called horseshoe or tadpole orbits , depending on their shape. The Trojan asteroids share tadpole orbits with Jupiter at points in front and behind the gas giant. Saturn’s two moons, Janus and Epimethus, orbit the planet in a horseshoe-shaped orbit and periodically switch places. Therefore, researchers believe that there may exist exoplanets in the same orbit.
The simulations by Raymond and his colleagues also reveal that the planet and its orbit have distinctive signs for astronomers on Earth to observe. The Kepler space telescope and many other observatories can detect transit time fluctuations (TTVs), in which the gravity between nearby planets changes slightly as the planet passes in front of the host star. . TTV from a star system of 24 Earth-sized planets sharing the same orbit will be large enough for astronomers to observe. But they will take months to years of monitoring to detect the effect, according to astronomer Rob Zellem of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
