Indeed, John Knoll, who is a visual effects supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic, which is part of Lucasfilm, and who worked on several of the “Star Wars” movies, joined the Ames news (conference) and showed a (clip) from the original movie.
“Again and again we see that the science is stranger and weirder than fiction,” Mr. Knoll said. “The very existence of this discovery gives us cause to dream bigger.”
While some double-star systems, of which there are billions in the (galaxy), have been suspected to harbor planets, those smaller bodies have never been seen.
“This is a direct detection; it removes all doubt,” said Laurance Doyle of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., who led the discovery team.
Beyond the wow factor, (astronomers) said the discovery — as so many discoveries of so-called exoplanets have done — had thrown a wrench into another well-received theory of how planets can and cannot form. “In other words,” said Sara Seager, a (planetary) expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was not part of the discovery team, “people don’t really know how to form this planet.”
It was long thought, Dr. Seager said, that for its (orbit) to be stable, a planet belonging to two stars at once would have to be at least seven times as far from the stars as the stars were from each other. According to that, Kepler 16b would have to be twice as far out as it is to survive.
“This planet broke the rule,” she said.
Moreover, by timing all the (eclipses) and transits of the planet and stars in the system, the astronomers have been able to measure the sizes and masses of the stars and the (planet) to unusually high precision, calibrating models of stellar and planetary properties.