Can a Planet Have Two Suns?

[TheBatSave]

wow the woman is mutch inteligent in scients

[Pikalikasq]

what a stupid video. of course they can! don't you see star wars?

[TheMonolithicDonkey]

very informative

[megapraimturvo]

tatooine had 2 stars....

[mikebe41]

wow Dr? Looks like A TEENAGER

[AtlantisCreations]

On the movie 2010 Jupiter turned into a small star and earth had no darkness. My god it's full of stars!!

[starsandbarsforever]

yeah i got that one on dvd myself. my god it's full of stars. hal 9000.

[BigLouieLittlePhilly]

dr who?

[coopmen]

The planet tattoeine in star wars orbits a binary star system......

[lucydobbyn]

when the our sun dies in 500000000000000000000000000000­000000000000000000000000000000­000000000000000000000000000000­000000000000000000000000000000­000000000000000000000000000000­000000000000000000000000000000­0 years will it b possible that humans can liv on another planet?(please note i havent got a clue how many 0s i put in)

[Pauliakas112]

scientists say they found water on mars and after 200 years we'll be able to live on mars

[0willbecome100]

no we couldn't terraforming mars would take a VERY long time but we could help out by Building massive factories speeding up Global warming and Planting A LOT of trees which use carbon dioxide to respirate and expel Oxygen

[Ramel34]

You were close, add about 6 more 0's and that should be a pretty accurate year for the sun to die. It'll be like Star Trek by then.

[h3llboy92]

our sun dies in 5 000 000 000 years... .-.

[ILoveJyze]

its actually going to die in 4-5 billion years

[xMattyManu94x]

yes on

doctor who!

[SirSpoon84]

i hate when i can easily tell when ppl are reading their script

[ydaerdnatoh]

parents can have more than one 'son' so why can't a planet? ;) tehe

[favorites411]

Tattooine in Star Wars

[hyrael2]

Star wars is fiction.

[freshtrav97]

acually the solar system was suppost to be a binary star system. I bet that a lot of you dont know this but jupiter has all of the ingreedients to make a star but it is so cold and not heavy enough that it did not ignight

[phantomspellchecker]

1:35 She has no legs!!!!

[UnseenKnight]

earth may have 1 soon. planet x

[mikelf77]

Silly.

[SNoRRo]

No one is even sure about what niburu exactly is...

Some call it a planet, some call it a brown dwarf star.. and I've even read from a pleiadian contact location that Niburu is now a kind of spaceship, re-constructed from an ancient inter-galactic war.....

There's just too much mis information about this.

Doesn't really matter anyway.

But about the binary star stuff, if Jupiter were a bit more massive it would collapse on itself and become a star.

[Guard655]

The closest sun the Earth, Alpha Centauri is actually a 3 sun solar system.

So yeah It does have 3 suns .

[boggy2411]

thing is, our own solar system may have it's own companion star, but it is so far away, you can't sort it out of the other stars because of it's distance.

[Kulawendin]

This stuff is so interesting.

[LoveStar127]

i know

[kalkinas1]

did you know that VV cephei A is a binary star

well it is.

[WormHorse17]

lol I heard 3 sound effects from Microsoft Windows XPs Space cadet pinball XD

[metaknightmares]

Haha, I did too.

[revilo178]

what about a sunlike star orbiting a supergiant at a greater distance? then a planet orbiting this star would be safe but the supergiant would still look big and bright enough to be regarded as a sun despite ist distance.

[DarkMuu666]

It's possible for a time, but supergiants blow up much faster Sun like stars.

[lithium2370]

wuld be too hot and idk how the gravitational pull wuld be like i can see how it can be like but idk

[halo3lite]

its possible... take a ps2 star wars battle front 2/1 (idk which 1 it is) and go to instant action. After make it mos eisley (soz for spell) then look in the sun. theres a glitch there too lol

[29sucks]

Hey I got that game. Ill try it lol!

[sampj13]

Damn, me too.

[MapleStoryP]

=P haha

¬¬¬¬

[kelpokelp]

1,36 the legs are gone!

[SpitzerJim]

I know. I set up an application I'm not supposed to name in a public forum made by a company named after a piece of fruit to render out all the final versions of the video. Most of the files were fine, so I didn't check the full-res version I used to upload here, and lo and behold, there was a render error in that one file. I decided that it was better not to delete and re-post, since that would have killed links and embeds, and deleted all comments.

[BloodHuman3]

It's gotta be impossible if a Planet had 2 suns.

The planet could easily burn.

[aleclego]

it would still be a planet though...

[jaedcapo]

There can be live in fact, if the planet its too far away from theese stars the planet wont be that hot, it also depends on the size of these stars.

[kpheider]

Not if the stars are less massive than the Sun or if the planet is more distant for the primary star.

[BobertThePieGuy]

yes it is posible

[tommybrett]

imagine 3 stars orbiting each other

[revilo178]

Alpha Centauri A, B and C ;-)

[Ununennium119]

Actually, from a terrestrial planet in Alpha Centauri, there would be two yellow suns and one red, smaller sun. But that red sun wouldn't be too significant.

[revilo178]

even 4 stars orbiting each other is far from being that uncommon. I think behind the so-called Polar Star there's two binary systems orbitig one another. Our solar system is very, very simple by the average standard, which is probably the reason why it is suitable for life.

[OUSOONERSFTW]

or maybe the sun never sets on a planet? the first sun would go down the horizon only to have a new star come up the opposite? so only twilight and dusk are possible.

[revilo178]

theoretically it is possible. I think, morevoer, it might be the most common thing in the universe, since most systema have more than a single star.

[LawOfLogic]

She looks like a man :P

[dahunterfromrune]

wouldnt a planet in a binary system be rather radioactive? i meen ude need a very very good o-zone.

[tehenvoked]

there is a galaxy with a solar sytem whcih has 3 stars, interlocked in eachothers gravite

[revilo178]

yes, ours: the Alpha Centauri system (4,3 light-years away from the sun) consists of 3 stars ;-)

[revilo178]

by the way: the most interesting piece of science-fiction related to the topic of this video is "Nightfall" by Asimov and Silverberg. There a planet has no less than SIX suns of which at least one is always in the sky, so that there is never darkness. till some astronomers discover that there is going to be an eclypse soon which will plunge the planet in darkness, which will drive ppl mad and destroy civilisation...

[revilo178]

*into darkness

[imworthmoney]

interesting theory lol

[viramont90]

Ha, my comment failed.

;D

[viramont90]

The title is pretty stupid, every planet shares the same sun (star).

[adamco1999]

you've got to be kidding me! Have you been asleep for the last 10 years. There are other planets besides the ones in our solor system!

[QuietDesperation20]

I have a question for you. When a star, the size of our sun, runs out of hydrogen its core contracts and heats up so much that the "sorrunding shell" starts fusing helium to carbon, right? Well, this star is said to swell up and become a red giant. What I want to know is why the star becomes red? and why it's said to be much more luminous when in fact the star is cooling down? I thought that that the brightness of a star was directly correlated with its temperature.

[Mavrik347]

I believe it's to do with in general, when fire or and intense heat source becomes starved of fuel. They go red. Try it with a normal flame... Although maybe not, I don't want you setting your house on fire lol

[QuietDesperation20]

Thanks for the response. Actually, I asked my astronomy professor why it is that it turned red, and she said it was due to the temperature. Since the star cools down it turns red because red is a cooler color (according to the color specrum). I just forgot to ask her about the luminosity of a red giant.

Now I don't have to set my house on fire! LOL. I was really looking forward to it though. ^^

Thanks again!

[revilo178]

well the surface of a red giant is much bigger so that although a single square meter doesn't shine as bright as the one of a hotter star, the mass does it.

[revilo178]

"hotter" refers only to the surface, to be sure ;-) the core of a giant star is as hot as any.

[QuietDesperation20]

I believe that hotter could refer to both the core and the surface of a star. A star that is a lot more massive than the sun, fuses hydrogen into helium at a much faster rate as the temperature of the core is higher, and in turn the surface is hotter as well.

[revilo178]

I agree with that. but since the higher fusion rate also results in higher inner pressure, which makes the star blow up, the surface paradoxically turns cooler. every piece of gas gets cooler when it is released into bigger space, for instance from a bottle into a room.

[QuietDesperation20]

When you refer to a red giant -the act of expanding is what makes it cool down as gas particles have more room to move around. When a low mass star turns into a red giant it doesn't explode yet when a high mass star turns into a red giant it goes supernova.

When a star is born very massive the core indeed is very hot, and the inner gas pressure is higher than it would be in a low mass star; which is why the life spand of a "big" star is shorter than a "small" star.

[QuietDesperation20]

So higher a higher fusion rate doesn't necessarily lead to a star explosion when a star is born massive. A massive star needs a higher fusion rate, and higher inner core pressure to counteract the force of gravity to keep from collapsing.

[revilo178]

we are expanding very much on the original theme ;)

ppl interested in this broader astrophysical issue may look at the videos by doctordave (one of my subscriptions), especially the video "astronomy lecture - stellar evolution".

[QuietDesperation20]

I guess we are;) I just took a quick look at the vid, and it covers interesting facts about the life cycle of a star, but it isn't any different from what I've been taught in my astronomy class. I wasn't sure what you were referring to when you said " higher fusion rate also results in higher inner pressure, which makes the star blow up" so I gave you what I thought was a decent response. Only massive stars blow up and become either neutron stars or black holes- it all depends on the mass.

[revilo178]

probably my choice of words was not the best one. by "blow up" I meant "swell", not "explode".

[QuietDesperation20]

I think I've got the answer to my own question. Could it be that the red giant becomes more luminous because hydrogen fusion is going at a much faster rate in the hydrogen shell? It's producing photons (particles of light) at a much faster rate than before.

Oh, and it turns red because it's cooling down. In the color spectrum red is a cool color as oposed to blue which is a hotter color. (OBAFGKM)

[revilo178]

yes that's the ultimate reason why the giant star in the end casts mora light into space than a smaller one.

[QuietDesperation20]

I wasn't sure why the red giant turned red because I was absent when they went over that in class, but I've read that chapter so I have a better understanding of it.^^

[upupsteru]

turns red because it cooled down

[EraofAwakening]

I imagined this kind of system being able to work a long time ago. Heh what's so hard about it?

[guiliomcewan]

who are you

[tommybrett]

isnt there supposted to be a brown dwarf orbiting our solar system (not jupiter/saturn)its suppost to be a pluto like orbit

[SpitzerJim]

I've seen a few claims to that effect, but thus far no one has been able to definitively detect it if it's there. Since brown dwarfs are notoriously hard to find, it's possible, but most astronomers consider it unlikely.

[goofy1071]

i thogut she was a man omg

[adsonkool]

nice

[ChomuSclavus]

For the first half-second, I thought Carolyn looked like a 13 year old boy.

She could really pass as one.

[Duhya]

omg me 2!

[SHGSFG]

same here lol

[shaokan777]

omg that's a girl?!

[JuichiShichi]

i love how you can tell she is reading her lines.

[wachmekillu]

Primark clothes me thinks -- reminds me of Tatoo I and Tatoo II

[FLAME4564]

XD ROFL XD awsome pinball effects XD.

[superald1997]

Dr. Carolyn Brinkworth is flying!

[SpitzerJim]

Didn't you know that astronomers have super powers? :P

[pearcey77]

of course they do... what an obivous fact how else do you think they get pictures of the stars?

[wachmekillu]

yeah true cos' it wasn't 3d software

[ganymedeIV4]

Theres are flipping tons of binary stars. a good part of the bigger dippers handle consists of Binary stars. check it out yourself.

[bradwatson7324]

Great video...so glad you posted it!

[zenniz1992]

OMG , two civilazation on one solar system.

Either war or peace will happen.

[Taesu911]

If there is a stable solitary system of 2 suns. Is 24 hours one day?

[SpitzerJim]

That would depend on the speed the planet rotates at...

[xxwillywankaxx]

what if a unknown gas planet was near a star at the exact same place as mercury and distance from the star will the solar flairs make the planet bigger after all its a gas planet

[EmEmEmEl]

I would like to see an animation of the possible day lengths off a planet with two suns. If the stars are close to each other, I imagine it'd be like our days, but it must be irregular for far apart suns, right?

[SpitzerJim]

For the really close binary stars, the scene in Star Wars is actually a decent visualization. For the stars that are farther apart, the second star in the system would most likely just look like a very bright star in the night sky.

[rx7gl]

0/5

[TopazSkillMauler]

1/5 -.-

[Gokas1746]

Why can't we feel our speed if we go very fast around the oribt?

[SpitzerJim]

The short answer is that we don't actually feel speed. Everything on the planet is moving at the same speed as us, so relatively, it feels like we're all standing still. But if part of the earth suddenly moved in a different direction (like in an Earthquake), we'd feel that!

[Triple88a]

same reason why you dont feel like you're going 500 mph in an airplane :) its moving at the same speed as you

[loveyougirl26]

the gravity

[chappo7777]

Yes, sorry spitzer i have watched it a bit more closely now, thanks for that lol.

[SpitzerJim]

Actually, I quite like hearing what isn't clear on a casual first viewing. It'll help us make sure we explain things better in future episodes.

[chappo7777]

In A supernova. Just Though You'd Like to know.. all information has been taken from the BBC program "The Universe."

[chappo7777]

Can I Just correct something about this video, i watched a program on a documentary channel called "The Universe" and the information it gave me was relatively different to what this video tells you at 58-1:10, The bigger star off the binary stars don't always get all off it's matarial from the smaller star, the smaller star can be a white dwarf which gravity is so great around it, it literally sucks the life energy off the larger star, but the compression gets to much for the white dwarf...

[SpitzerJim]

That's correct. You'll notice she says "the more massive one" and not "the biggest one" because a white dwarf (which is what the animation shows) can easily be more massive than a larger main sequence star. If you watch the animation we used closely, you'll see that the material is going from the bigger star to the smaller one. (OK, it's not as clear as it could have been, but if we didn't re-use as much animation as humanly possible, we'd never put these things out.)

[PEFANIS1]

I LOVE ASTRONOMY

WHAT A GREAT VIDEO

[demonknight66698]

I learnt a lot from this video, reminds me of the time I found my first binary star or at least that's what it looked like from Earth. I know there are some that aren't true binary stars.

[noblerottt]

Can a chick hide her boobs and look like a dude? Ask an astronomer.

[forgettingheath]

apparently cause i thought it was a 15 year old boy until the end

[lostorfound19]

yeah me too lol

very interesting topic though

[xXWatchinsumvideosXx]

this is amazing!

[redblueice]

Thanks for sharing, you made me think about another civilization in our own galaxy, now would that be interesting.

[lifewataniya]

cool. keep em comming

[xThatSexyGuy]

Thanks, All Your Videos Are Great. Keep Them Up :)

[SpitzerJim]

Thanks! We're trying to get more videos out!

[5thElement15]

excellent video !

[SpitzerJim]

Thanks!

[pajamaninja367]

haha I love the windows pinball machine sound FX they stole

[SpitzerJim]

Stole? ::blinks innocently::

[pajamaninja367]

haha stole is harsh, but it fit. =]

[Toonplayer08]

Man i thought that the planet would just orbit in a sort of 8 kinda orbit

[SpitzerJim]

We actually cut out a section on figure-8 orbits for time. They're almost impossible to make stable, and the unstable orbit we illustrated is far more typical.

[Malkas578]

firt view!