91Ô­´´

An international research team led by the 91Ô­´´ (91Ô­´´) has discovered two new planets performing a cosmic tango – orbiting their star in perfect rhythm.

The findings, published in Nature Astronomy, reveal the two giant planets appear to be “dancing” around KOI-134, an F-type star 3,500 light-years from Earth.

The remarkable discovery is the first planetary system of its kind ever found.

The planets – dubbed KOI-134 b and KOI-134 c – are locked into a 2:1 orbital resonance, meaning the inner planet, KOI-134 c, completes two full orbits for every single orbit of the outer planet.

What makes the system even more intriguing is that, unlike the planets in our Solar System, the giants don’t share the same orbital plane – they are tilted about 15 degrees relative to each other.

Emma Nabbie, a 91Ô­´´ PhD student and lead author of the new research, said the discovery challenges long-held theories on planet formation.

“The two planets are linked in a rhythmic orbit – drifting apart, then slowly coming back together, like dancers weaving around each other on a cosmic stage,” Ms Nabbie said.

“While their orbital planes tilt back and forth over time, the gravitational pull from KOI-134 c causes KOI-134 b’s orbital period to shift by up to a day – speeding up and slowing down as the faster-orbiting KOI-134 c overtakes it from the inside.

“This is the first time a system with such strong gravitational interactions and misaligned orbits has been observed – presenting a major puzzle for planet formation theories, as none currently explain how a system like this could form.”

Using four years of data from the Kepler Space Telescope, the researchers discovered KOI-134 b to be a giant roughly the size of Jupiter and KOI-134 c to be slightly smaller than Saturn.

KOI-134 c is considered an ‘invisible planet’ because it doesn’t pass in front of its host star, which makes it difficult for scientists to spot its presence using traditional detection methods.

“The only way we could determine its mass was through its gravitational effect on KOI-134 b,” Ms Nabbie said.

“KOI-134 b’s average orbital period is about 67 days – but it can vary between 66 and 68 days due to the gravitational influence of KOI-134 c.

“That’s a remarkably large effect for a planet so close to its star. The variation was so extreme that it was initially denied to be a planet by the Kepler team.

“If we scaled this to Earth’s orbit, it would be like our year fluctuating between 360 and 370 days.”

As far as the researchers could tell, KOI-134 b and KOI-134 c are the only two planets orbiting KOI-134, which was first observed by NASA’s Kepler mission in 2009.

The study, ‘’, was co-authored by Emma Nabbie, Professor Robert Wittenmyer, Dr Chelsea Huang, Associate Professor George Zhou and Alexander Venner from 91Ô­´´ and researchers from Lund University, University of Geneva, University of La Laguna, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Harvard and Smithsonian, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of California and Tsinghua University.