Kepler Spacecraft Finds 2 Planets Sharing Same Orbit

To date, the telescope on the Kepler spacecraft has detected 1,235 planet candidates, and while Earth-bound telescopes are trying to determine if 54 of those planets may have conditions that could harbor life, one unique planetary system may have been uncovered.

Unique because it's the first time scientists have discovered what may be two planets sharing the same orbit of their home sun, New Scientist reports.

Artist concept of two planets in same orbit around a faraway sun.

NASA / Ames / JPL-Caltech

This illustration shows two Saturn-sized planets discovered by NASA's Kepler mission. This is the first star system found to have multiple transiting planets.

Since planets are so far away and smaller than their host stars, Kepler is only able to "see" the potential planets by measuring any decreases in the brightness of stars, which would be caused by planets passing in front of them.

If this dual-orbiting planet hypothesis gets confirmed, researchers suggest it would lend credence to a theory that our moon was created when a planet-sized object, sharing a similar orbit to Earth's eons ago, possibly crashed into our home world.

"Systems like this are not common, as this is the only one we have seen," said Jack Lissauer, a space scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.

The double-planetary system, dubbed KOI-730, is described in greater detail by Lissauer and his colleagues in the Astrophysical Journal.

Sponsored Links

"About one-third of the 1,200 transiting planet candidates detected in the first four months of Kepler data are members of multiple candidate systems," the scientists wrote.

"Several considerations strongly suggest that the vast majority of these multi-candidate systems are true planetary systems."

A big question scientists now wonder about the KOI-730 planets is whether they're headed for a runaway collision that could result in the formation of a moon.

But, in the galactic scheme of things, these two potential planets will most likely continue their cosmic close dance with each other for at least another 2 million years.

Read more at New Scientist and the Astrophysical Journal.

Are you following AOL Weird News on Facebook and Twitter?