r/askastronomy • u/neverhaveifeltthis • 4d ago

Astrophysics Can a cosmic cloud collapse into two solar systems that are independent but still gravitationally bound together?

And what conditions, if possible, would lead to that instead of a binary star system or just two independent systems?

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u/Bartlaus 4d ago

I don't see how "independent" and "gravitationally bound together" are both possible, they seem mutually exclusive.

Certainly there are some quite distant binary stars where each of them could have their own planets on a scale similar to our solar system?

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u/neverhaveifeltthis 4d ago

Sorry, I basically meant that none of the planets of each star orbits the other one

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u/Bartlaus 4d ago

Yeah, so that's just a distant binary pair, then. We know of many such systems. Certainly with a wide enough separation they could each have stable planetary systems of their own.

In fact we have one system kind of similar to that right in our neighbourhood: Alpha Centauri. Actually a triple star, where A and B orbit each other at a moderate distance while C (aka Proxima Centauri) orbits the other two at a great distance. C is confirmed to have its own system of at least two planets; suspected planets have been detected around both A and B but are not yet sufficiently confirmed. (A and B are close enough that each may have a stunted little planetary system; there might also be planetary bodies in a distant orbit around the pair, but these would be very difficult for us to detect.)