Mirror worlds: Planets we’ve uncovered that are sci-fi come to life
An orb with twin suns, a star twice as old as our sun... see how new finds with surprising parallels in fiction are rewriting our understanding of the universe.
Astrophysicists are uncovering planets that echo worlds from the works of James Cameron, Andy Weir and George Lucas. Take a look.
James Cameron’s Avatar (2009) is set on Pandora, a lush, habitable and fictional moon that orbits a gas giant in the very real Alpha Centauri triple-star system, 4.3 light years away.
THE MULTI-STAR SYSTEM: Alpha Centauri
James Cameron’s Avatar (2009) is set on Pandora, a lush, habitable and fictional moon that orbits a gas giant in the very real Alpha Centauri A, which is part of a triple-star system 4.3 light years away from Earth. This August, NASA astronomers peering through the James Webb Space Telescope found that a gas giant about the size of Saturn does indeed orbit Alpha Centauri A.
Because of its proximity, and the fact that we recognised it as a binary star system as far back as the 1600s, Alpha Centauri has featured prominently in science-fiction.
In Isaac Asimov short stories of the 1940s, humans use hyperspace or faster-than-light travel to get to Alpha Centauri. In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979), an intergalactic bureaucratic office is stationed there.
The star system also forms the battleground in the critically acclaimed strategy video game, Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri (1999).
AN ANCIENT SUN: Tau Ceti
Just under 12 light years away, Tau Ceti is about twice as old as our Sun, and only a bit smaller. Known to astronomers for centuries, it features in Larry Niven’s A Gift from Earth (1968), in which advanced colonies take root on planets circling this sun.
In Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora (2015), a generation ship makes its way to a new world, a moon orbiting one of the planets in Tau Ceti’s system.
In Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary (2021), this star system holds the key to solving an extinction-level solar dimming event threatening Earth.
Astronomers have so far detected four possible planets around Tau Ceti, with no confirmed moons.
A REAL-WORLD VULCAN?
A triple-star system about 16 light-years away consists of the white dwarf 40 Eridani B, the red dwarf 40 Eridani C and 40 Eridani A, a star that is smaller, cooler and half as luminous as our Sun.
In fiction, Vulcan, the home of the Star Trek hero Commander Spock, orbits one of the three stars. In 2018, Trekkies celebrated when a planet much like Vulcan was indeed found to be orbiting 40 Eridani A. Last year, further investigation revealed that the planet had merely been an astronomical illusion, caused by the pulses and jitters of the star itself.
A SHINING NEWCOMER: Epsilon Eridani
This orange star about 10 light years away stars in the 1994 space opera Babylon 5, set aboard a space station. It has also featured in game franchises such as Halo (2001), in which humans have colonised its fictional planet, Reach.
A SKY WITH TWO SUNS: Kepler-16 b
A still from Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope shows Tatooine, with its twin suns.
In George Lucas’s Star Wars universe, the desert planet Tatooine, with its burnt-orange sky, serves as a vital epicentre. The home of the young Jedi Luke Skywalker, it circles two suns, Tatoo I and Tatoo II, as first depicted in 1977, in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope.
In 2011 NASA’s Kepler mission found a planet where two suns set on the horizon, Kepler-16 b, 245 light years from Earth. Unlike Tatooine, it is cold, gaseous and unlikely to harbour any kind of life.
E-Paper
