CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.—Astronomers reported Wednesday the discovery of what could be two planets sharing the same orbit around their star.
They said it’s the strongest evidence yet of this bizarre cosmic pairing, long suspected but never proven.
Using a telescope in Chile, the Spanish-led team spotted a cloud of debris in the same orbit as an already confirmed planet circling this star, 370 light-years away in the constellation Centaurus. They suspect it’s either a planet in formation or remnants of a planet that once was.
Asteroids are known to accompany planets around their star—for example, Jupiter and its so-called Trojan asteroids. But planets in the same orbit “have so far been like unicorns,” noted study co-author Jorge Lillo-Box of Madrid’s Center for Astrobiology….