IF WE ever travel to the nearest solar system, it would be good to know the kind of planets to expect. Now we have the best hint yet.
The Alpha Centauri dual star system is thought to host rocky Earth-mass worlds, but this assumes they could form in the turbulent conditions associated with the opposing gravitational tugs of paired star systems.
To find out, of the University of Florida in Gainesville and colleagues built a computer simulation of the system, which showed that moon-sized protoplanets – the precursors to larger worlds – could indeed form after about…
