What if the Solar System had 60 planets like Earth?

Ever wondered if, instead of just one Earth, the Solar System had 60 of them? For according to the New Scientist, astrophysicist Sean Raymond of the Bordeaux Observatory in France decided to create a hypothetical model to find out how many planets our system could contain before breaking the laws of physics.

But before simply aligning a collection of Earths in the cosmos, Raymond set a couple of rules. First, the system should be plausible, and second, all planets should be gravitationally stable over billions of years. After all, there would be no point in organizing worlds in orbit and watching them spiral toward their sun.

In addition, the astrophysicist has relied on recent scientific studies and some calculations made by himself to create the hypothetical system. And in situations where he didn't have enough data but had to choose between two possible scenarios, Raymond simply decided on the one he liked best.

Starting point

The astrophysicist began by choosing a red dwarf as the star of the system in one such as our Sun, as these stars have a smaller mass and live longer, and offer a habitable zone - a region in which liquid water may exist. on the surface of a planet - more stable.

To augment the system, Raymond estimated that each world could count on a moon about the same size as Earth, and both stars would orbit around a central point. With this, the astrophysicist calculated that there would be enough space to organize six of these orbital configurations within the red dwarf's habitable zone, resulting in a total of 24 habitable planets in a single system.

To reach this conclusion, Raymond relied on the fact that a pair of planets can orbit a star from the same distance as long as the pair is separated by 60 degrees thanks to two stable gravitational points. In our solar system, these points are usually occupied by asteroids, but nothing prevents them from being occupied by planets. These bodies are known as "Trojans", and Jupiter, for example, has thousands of them.

60 planets

To increase the number of 24 planets to 60, Raymond considered gas giants like Jupiter. Although these stars do not offer habitability conditions, they can be orbited by bodies like Earth. So much so that in our own solar system we have Enceladus and Europa, two moons that are strong candidates to harbor alien life and orbit around Saturn and Jupiter respectively.

So the astrophysicist estimated that each red dwarf could count on four planets like Jupiter orbiting around it, and that each of them, in turn, could count on five moons like Earth. Moreover, based on the behavior of the Trojans, Raymond further estimated that another pair of worlds like ours could orbit either side of the gas giants, thereby increasing the number of habitable planets to 36.

Finally, the astrophysicist transformed the hypothetical system into a binary system, that is, with two red dwarfs separated by the distance from our sun to the limit of the solar system. Theoretically, this arrangement would allow one of the stars to present the configuration of 24 worlds as Earth, while the other star would present the structure with 36 as Jupiter, adding a total of 60 habitable planets.

Such a system - with so many habitable worlds - is unlikely to really exist in the Universe, and the reason for this, according to Mikko Tuomi of the University of Hartfordshire in England, would be the lack of matter near the habitable zone on the disc. accretion in which planets form. However, while it is virtually impossible for nature to have produced such a spectacular system, the model can inspire future studies related to exoplanets.