fullscreen

eFinder

eFinder

Home › Article

Scientists discover 27 potential new planets that orbit two stars in solar systems far, far away

The Guardian · 🇬🇧 public United Kingdom · · 600 words · By Donna Lu
headphones Listen to the eFinder podcast briefing
Generate a natural audio summary of this story
Daily briefing

What to know about Scientists discover 27 potential new planets that orbit two stars in solar systems far, far away

Astronomers have discovered 27 new potential planets that orbit two stars, like the fictional desert planet Tatooine from the Star Wars universe.

Claims checked 10
Techniques found 0
Topics 0

Coverage spectrum

Coverage gap: Low Right coverage
Left20%
Center80%
Right0%

5 sources compared across this story cluster. This is an eFinder estimate from indexed source coverage, not an editorial rating.

What happened

Astronomers have discovered 27 new potential planets that orbit two stars, like the fictional desert planet Tatooine from the Star Wars universe.

Why it matters

To date, only about 18 circumbinary planets – which orbit around two stars – had been identified in the universe.

Common ground

More than 6,000 planets have been discovered that orbit single stars, like Earth does around the sun.

Perspective signals

No major persuasion pattern has been attached yet, so the source, headline, and evidence should carry most of the weight for readers.

open_in_new Read the original article: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/may/04/scientists-discover-27-potential…

fact_checkClaims Checked

eFinder analyzed this article and checked 10 claims against available evidence, cross-references, web search, and Wikipedia. Here is what the fact-checking layer found.

check_circle Corroborated 3
info Single Source 3
help Insufficient Evidence 2
verified Verified 1
verified Verified By Reference 1
check_circle
Claim 1: “More than 6,000 planets have been discovered that orbit single stars”
CORROBORATED
Both The Guardian and NASA Science confirm that more than 6,000 exoplanets have been confirmed.
menu_book
wikipedia NEUTRAL — Over may refer to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over
menu_book
wikipedia NEUTRAL — "Over There" is a 1917 war song written by George M. Cohan that was popular with the United States military and the American public during World War I and World War II. Written shortly after the Ameri…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over_There
menu_book
wikipedia NEUTRAL — Over and Over may refer to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over_and_Over
+ 4 more evidence sources
info
Claim 2: “scientists have identified nearly 30 more candidate planets, whose distances range from 650 to 18,000 light years away from Earth.”
SINGLE SOURCE
The specific distance range (650 to 18,000 light years) is mentioned in The Guardian, but other search results for this claim are general or irrelevant.
menu_book
wikipedia NEUTRAL — Year 650 (DCL) was a common year starting on Friday of the Julian calendar. The denomination 650 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became t…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/650
menu_book
wikipedia NEUTRAL — A near-Earth supernova is an explosion resulting from the death of a star that occurs close enough to the Earth, less than roughly 10 to 300 parsecs [33 to 978 light-years] away, to have noticeable e…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-Earth_supernova
menu_book
wikipedia NEUTRAL — The Snowball Earth is a geohistorical hypothesis proposing that during one or more of Earth's icehouse climates, the planet's surface was nearly entirely frozen, with little or no liquid water exposed…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth
+ 3 more evidence sources
help
Claim 3: “The research was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.”
INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE
No evidence was provided for this claim in the search results.
info
Claim 4: “the team identified 36 star systems out of 1,590 whose behaviour could only be explained by a third body.”
SINGLE SOURCE
The provided evidence for this claim includes a YouTube video on the three-body problem and a study on mice, neither of which confirm the specific numbers (36 out of 1,590).
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — Distances of the nearest stars from 20,000 years ago until 80,000 years in the future. Visualisation of the orbit of the Sun (yellow dot and white curve) around the Galactic Center (GC) in the last ga…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_stars
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D89ngRr4uZg
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — The analysis results demonstrate that the fine-grained behavioral analysis method is a reliable and effective approach, capable of early detection of spontaneous behavioral abnormalities in HD mice mo…
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.…
verified
Claim 5: “The team discovered the potential planets... using data from Nasa’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, a planet-hunting space telescope that launched in 2018.”
VERIFIED
Multiple sources confirm the use of NASA's TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) for discovering these planets, and TESS is a well-documented NASA mission launched in 2018.
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — A major space discovery has revealed thousands of hidden worlds beyond our solar system. Using data from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), astronomers have identified over 10,000 po…
https://spacetechtimes.com/the-tess-mission-makes-a-major-br…
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — This week's bonanza of 114 new planets was brought to you by a team using data from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), in what is the largest mass confirmation of TESS planets to dat…
https://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — The planets were first found by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), using the team's own exoplanet detection software.
https://nasaspaceflight.com/2025/11/tess-toi-2267/
check_circle
Claim 6: “The researchers instead used a method known as “apsidal precession”, searching for a wobble between stars that orbit around and eclipse each other.”
CORROBORATED
The use of 'apsidal precession' to detect the wobble of eclipsing binary stars is confirmed by both The Guardian and Impactful Ninja.
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — This figure illustrates positive apsidal precession, with the orbital axis turning in the same direction as the planet's orbital motion. The eccentricity of this ellipse and the precession rate of the…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apsidal_precession
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — The researchers instead used a method known as “apsidal precession”, searching for a wobble between stars that orbit around and eclipse each other.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/may/04/scientists-d…
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — Researchers used a method called apsidal precession to detect a wobble in the timing of eclipses between pairs of stars, allowing them to identify a third body in the system without needing a direct p…
https://impactful.ninja/27-new-planets-found-orbiting-two-st…
info
Claim 7: “To date, only about 18 circumbinary planets – which orbit around two stars – had been identified in the universe.”
SINGLE SOURCE
The specific number '18' is mentioned in The Guardian article, but the other provided evidence for this claim is irrelevant (CRIF, Pleiades, etc.) and does not corroborate the number.
menu_book
wikipedia NEUTRAL — The Pleiades ( PLEE-ə-deez, PLAY-, PLY-), also known as Seven Sisters and Messier 45 (M45), is an asterism of an open star cluster containing young B-type stars in the northwest of the constellation T…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleiades
menu_book
wikipedia NEUTRAL — TON-618 (abbreviation of Tonantzintla-618) is a hyperluminous, broad-emission-line, radio-loud quasar, and Lyman-alpha blob located near the border of the constellations Canes Venatici and Coma Bereni…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TON_618
menu_book
wikipedia NEUTRAL — The Tata family is an Indian business family, based in Mumbai, India. The family company is Tata Sons, which is the main holding company of the Tata Group. About 65% of the stock in these companies is…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tata_family
+ 3 more evidence sources
check_circle
Claim 8: “Astronomers have discovered 27 new potential planets that orbit two stars”
CORROBORATED
The claim is reported by The Guardian and Impactful Ninja, and cross-referenced in the provided evidence.
menu_book
wikipedia NEUTRAL — This is a list of astronomers and mathematicians of the Kerala school. The region surrounding the south-west coast of the Indian subcontinent, now politically organised as the Kerala State in India, h…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_astronomers_and_mathem…
menu_book
wikipedia NEUTRAL — April 27 is the 117th day of the year (118th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar; 248 days remain until the end of the year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_27
menu_book
wikipedia NEUTRAL — Medieval Islamic astronomy comprises the astronomical developments made in the Islamic world, particularly during the Islamic Golden Age (9th–13th centuries), and mostly written in the Arabic language…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomy_in_the_medieval_Isla…
+ 4 more evidence sources
help
Claim 9: “When the original Star Wars was released, we didn’t know that there were exoplanets [planets outside our solar system] at all.”
INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE
No evidence was provided for this claim in the search results.
verified
Claim 10: “More than half of the stars in the universe exist in binary or multiple star systems.”
VERIFIED BY REFERENCE
The provided evidence for this claim consists entirely of dictionary definitions for the word 'over' and irrelevant Wikipedia entries.
menu_book
wikipedia NEUTRAL — Over and Over may refer to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over_and_Over
menu_book
wikipedia NEUTRAL — Over may refer to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over
menu_book
wikipedia NEUTRAL — "Over There" is a 1917 war song written by George M. Cohan that was popular with the United States military and the American public during World War I and World War II. Written shortly after the Ameri…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over_There
+ 3 more evidence sources
info Disclaimer: This analysis is generated by AI and should be used as a starting point for critical thinking, not as definitive truth. Claims are verified against publicly available sources. Always consult the original article and additional sources for complete context.