Tatooine is a fictional desert planet that was seen in the Star Wars saga. The planet appears in every Star Wars film except The Empire Strikes Back. It is home planet of Luke and Anakin Skywalker and has two suns.

From a long time, physicists have been saying that the planet was impossible. As per some scientific theories, only gas giants were able to form in binary star systems. Kepler Space Telescope of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) supported that idea. Till now, just seven planets have been discovered in such systems. All of them are big in size and could be equal to Jupiter or Neptune.

Now, a new mathematical analysis suggested that there are possibilities that universe has planets like Tatooine. According to the analysis, such planets are not only possible but could be common. According to astrophysicists Ben Bromley of the University of Utah and Scott Kenyon of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Tatooine sunsets could be common. They conducted a study to know whether planets like Tatooine are possible.

“Our main result is that outside a small region near a binary star, [either rocky or gas-giant] planet formation can proceed in much the same way as around a single star. In our scenario, planets are as prevalent around binaries as around single stars”, the astrophysicists added.

The study ‘Planet formation around binary stars: Tatooine made easy’ was funded by the United States space agency NASA. It has been published the ArXiv website. The study included previous work by the researchers which suggested that both Pluto and its moon Charon act as a binary system.

As per the researchers, the previous studies had problems that they were focused only on earth-like planets. The new study suggested that orbit of a planet like Tatooine would be an oval.