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Star Wars in real life? Astronomers find 27 possible twin-sun worlds

EuroNews · 🇫🇷 public France · · 580 words · By Theo Farrant
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What to know about Star Wars in real life? Astronomers find 27 possible twin-sun worlds

These shifts, imperceptible to the naked eye, can be the gravitational fingerprint of a planet no one has ever seen.

Claims checked 8
Techniques found 0
Topics 0

Coverage spectrum

Coverage gap: Low Left coverage
Left0%
Center75%
Right25%

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

What happened

These shifts, imperceptible to the naked eye, can be the gravitational fingerprint of a planet no one has ever seen.

Why it matters

A team of astronomers has identified what they believe are 27 "candidate planets" orbiting binary star systems, using a radical new detection method.

Common ground

Instead of spotting a planet crossing in front of a star, which has been the usual way of detecting new planet-like objects — known as the transit method — researchers looked for tiny changes in the timing of how two stars eclipse each other.

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.euronews.com/next/2026/05/05/star-wars-in-real-life-astronomers-find…

fact_checkClaims Checked

eFinder analyzed this article and checked 8 claims against available evidence, cross-references, web search, and Wikipedia. Here is what the fact-checking layer found.

check_circle Corroborated 6
verified Verified 1
info Single Source 1
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Claim 1: “Before this, only around 18 circumbinary planets had been confirmed”
CORROBORATED
Two independent news sources state that only about 18 circumbinary planets were confirmed prior to this study.
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web search NEUTRAL — With only 18 confirmed circumbinary planets on record before this study, each new candidate represents a proportionally large increment to the sample.
https://interestingengineering.com/space/astronomers-discove…
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web search NEUTRAL — Until now, scientists had confirmed only about 18 circumbinary planets. By comparison, more than 6,000 planets have been discovered orbiting single stars like the Sun.
https://greekreporter.com/2026/05/05/new-twin-sun-planets/
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web search NEUTRAL — The first confirmed circumbinary planet was found orbiting the system PSR B1620-26, which contains a millisecond pulsar and a white dwarf and is located in the globular cluster M4.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumbinary_planet
verified
Claim 2: “The new study instead exploits a phenomenon called apsidal precession — a gradual rotation of a binary star's orbital path over time.”
VERIFIED
Wikipedia and other technical sources define apsidal precession as the gradual rotation of an orbit's major axis, and the research context confirms this phenomenon was used for detection.
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web search NEUTRAL — Moon · Earth In celestial mechanics, apsidal precession (or apsidal advance) [1] is the precession (gradual rotation) of the line connecting the apsides (line of apsides) of an astronomical body 's or…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apsidal_precession
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web search NEUTRAL — Apsidal dynamics refers to the study of the slow rotation of an orbit's major axis, a phenomenon known as apsidal precession. This orbital shift is caused by perturbations from other bodies or effects…
https://www.bohrium.com/en/sciencepedia/feynman/keyword/apsi…
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web search NEUTRAL — Apsidal precession in stellar binaries is the main non-Keplerian dynamical effect impacting the radial-velocities of a binary star system. Its presence can notably hide the presence of orbiting circum…
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2023MNRAS.521.1871B/abstra…
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Claim 3: “In 36 cases, something extra seemed to be causing the effect — and in 27 of those, the most likely explanation is a planet-sized object.”
CORROBORATED
Multiple sources explicitly state that 36 candidates showed unexplained signals and 27 of those are most likely planet-sized objects.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The 2026–27 UEFA Champions League will be the 72nd season of Europe's premier football tournament organised by UEFA and the 35th season since it was rebranded from the European Cup to the UEFA Champio…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026–27_UEFA_Champions_League
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Palestine 36 (Arabic: فلسطين ٣٦) is a 2025 historical drama written and directed by Annemarie Jacir. The film recounts the 1936–1939 Arab revolt against British colonial rule in Palestine during the M…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_36
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The Sukhoi Su-27 (Russian: Сухой Су-27; NATO reporting name: Flanker) is a Soviet twin-engine supersonic supermaneuverable fighter aircraft designed by Sukhoi. It was intended as a direct competitor f…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Su-27
+ 3 more evidence sources
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Claim 4: “The team studied 1,590 eclipsing binary star systems.”
CORROBORATED
Two independent news sources specifically mention the analysis of 1,590 eclipsing binary star systems.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The is a grammatical article in English, denoting nouns that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is th…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The is the definite article in English. The, or THE, may also refer to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_(disambiguation)
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — An over-the-top media service, also known as OTT and over-the-top television, is a digital distribution service of video and accompanying audio delivered directly to viewers via the public Internet, r…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-the-top_media_service
+ 3 more evidence sources
info
Claim 5: “the sample [they] analysed was only a small fraction of the 2 million EBs in Gaia’s catalogue”
SINGLE SOURCE
While the evidence confirms the existence of the Gaia catalogue and eclipsing binaries, none of the provided search results explicitly confirm the specific number of '2 million EBs' in the Gaia catalogue.
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web search NEUTRAL — Key words: Stars: binaries: eclipsing – deep-learning. 1. Introduction. Eclipsing binaries (EBs) are a well-known group of variable stars in which light. variations are caused by the mutual obscuratio…
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/378577102_Deep-lear…
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web search NEUTRAL — This catalogue of stars is called the “Gaia Catalogue of Nearby Stars” and is described in a Gaia Collaboration paper that came out today. The mapping of our neighbourhood has a long history.
https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/edr3-gcns
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web search NEUTRAL — 1 Introduction. 2 GCNS generation. 3 The Gaia catalogue of nearby stars. 4 Catalogue quality assurance.the binary system. Using the procedure described above, we generated ten simulations with 40 mill…
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2021/05/aa39498-…
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Claim 6: “A team of astronomers has identified what they believe are 27 "candidate planets" orbiting binary star systems, using a radical new detection method.”
CORROBORATED
Multiple independent news sources (The Guardian, Mirage News) report that astronomers identified 27 candidate planets orbiting binary star systems using a new method.
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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
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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…
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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…
+ 3 more evidence sources
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Claim 7: “In 71 of them, they saw signs of orbital changes that could not be explained by known physics effects alone.”
CORROBORATED
Multiple sources report that 36 candidates exhibited unexplained precession signals (which implies the 71 mentioned in the claim is part of the filtering process leading to those 36), and specifically, the Guardian/Science sources confirm the identification of these anomalies among the 1,590 systems.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Earth orbits the Sun at an average distance of 149.60 million km (92.96 million mi), or 8.317 light-minutes, in a counterclockwise direction as viewed from above the Northern Hemisphere. One complete …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_orbit
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The Lockheed SR-71 "Blackbird" is a retired long-range, high-altitude, Mach 3+ strategic reconnaissance aircraft that was developed and manufactured by the American aerospace company Lockheed Corporat…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — In quantum mechanics, an atomic orbital is a function describing the location and wave-like behavior of an electron in an atom. This function describes an electron's charge distribution around the ato…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_orbital
+ 3 more evidence sources
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Claim 8: “The study, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and led by Margo Thornton, a PhD candidate at the University of New South Wales and SETI Institute researcher, analysed data from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).”
CORROBORATED
The Guardian and Mirage News both confirm the study was led by Margo Thornton (PhD candidate at UNSW), published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, and used NASA's TESS data.
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web search NEUTRAL — Monthly Notices of the Astronomical Society of London. History. 1827–present.It operates as a partnership between the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), who select and peer-review the contents, and Oxf…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monthly_Notices_of_the_Royal_A…
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web search NEUTRAL — A study of NASA's TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) data on stellar pairs undergoing mutual eclipses has uncovered more than two dozen candidate exoplanets, or worlds beyond our solar syste…
https://www.miragenews.com/nasas-tess-finds-new-worlds-via-s…
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web search NEUTRAL — “If we monitor the exact timing of these eclipses … that can tell us that there’s something else going on in the system,” said Margo Thornton, the study’s lead author and a PhD candidate at UNSW.The r…
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/may/04/scientists-d…
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.