Star Wars' Luke Skywalker's home planet, Tatooine, orbits two suns. Outside of Hollywood movie fantasy, it's been believed that only uninhabitable gas-giant planets can orbit binary stars.

But now, double sunsets on Earth-like planets is a mathematical possibility.

Researchers Ben Bromley from the University of Utah and Scott Kenyon from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory have discovered that Earthlike, solid planets such as Tatooine may exist and may even be common.

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"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 was as around a single star. In our scenario, planets are as prevalent around binaries as around single stars," they explained.

NASA's Outer Planets Program funded the study and was a "spinoff" of Bromley's and Kenyon's research into how dwarf planet Pluto and its major moon, Charon, act like a binary system. The study is packed with mathematical formulas that describe how binary stars can be orbited by planetesimals, asteroid-size rocks that clump together to form planets.

The study pointed out that planetesimals need to merge gently together to grow. Planetesimals tend to follow circular paths -- concentric rings that don't cross.

Usually, planetesimals paths get mixed up by the to-and-fro pull of the binary stars. The researchers added that its orbits tangled at high speeds, resulting in destructive collisions, not growth.

The new study states that when planets are small, they naturally search for oval orbits and never start off on circular ones. Also, the study suggests that planetesimals can survive without collisions for tens of thousands of years in concentric, oval-shaped orbits around binary stars.

The new study appeared in the Astrophysical Journal.

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