Astronomers have discovered several planets orbiting two stars at once, called circumbinary planets. Now, they might have found the first planet orbiting three. AstronomyDay
reports. A star system 1300 light-years from Earth called GW Ori has two stars closely orbiting one another with a third star farther out that circles them, and a huge disk of dust that surrounds all three . That dusty disk is split into three rings, with a large gap between the inner ring and the other two.
Scientists have debated whether this gap in the ring is a symptom of gravitational torque caused by the three stars, or is instead evidence of the first known “circumtriple” planet carving out its orbit. New modeling points to a massive planet—or even multiple planets—as the. If confirmed, this could strengthen the idea that planets form more commonly throughout the universe than thought—even in particularly strange systems.