As far as stars go, ours is fairly ordinary and straightforward: a giant ball of absurdly hot gas that showed up a few billion years ago and has about a few billion left. But our sun is just one of at least 70 sextillion stars in the universe; with a number that huge, there are bound to be many far more interesting and bizarre than our own.



To date, only four planets have been discovered orbiting a double-star system, which means Tatooine is even less likely to exist than you might have imagined. So when a recent double-star system was discovered with not one, but two planets orbiting around them, the reaction within the scientific community was nothing short of pure shock.

The Kepler-47 system has two stars, one roughly the size of the Sun and another three times as small. Orbiting those two are a couple of planets; one of which is within the fabled “habitable zone,” the distance from a star equal to our own, and a signal of potential for life. Or rather, it would be if the planet in question wasn’t a gas giant. Regardless, the existence of the Kepler system renews hope among astronomers that habitable planets do exist and that they could turn up just about anywhere.