Home planet is "Game of thrones" can really exist

Winter is coming. Here on Earth, we can accurately predict when it will occur, how long and even how severe it will be. But in the world of the continents of Westeros and Essos in the epic series by George R. R. Martin is not so. Imagine living in a world where the seasons are unpredictable: their duration, onset and severity is completely unknown. Between the winters can take months, years or decades, and they can be mild, severe or catastrophic, to be years. Although the Earth has never experienced such chaos, the outer moons of Pluto, and it showed us the satellite New horizons. Now we can scientifically prove that the world of "a Song of Ice and Fire" may not be so fantastic... if the world of Westeros will be a satellite in orbit a giant double planet, says theoretical physicist Ethan Siegel.

Double planet, in theory, can be a variety of sizes and orbital distances. Any smaller worlds that orbit them at range, will maintain a stable orbit, but to revolve and swing — chaotic

It May seem as if nature itself rebelled against you. Planets rotate around its axis, revolve around their parent stars in an ellipse, and any changes that occur in their orbits, or in the extreme gradual or immediately catastrophic. If there is no collision or interaction with a massive body nearby, the only changes will be related to the orbit precession, the slow deceleration of rotation and the movement of the planets around the Sun. Time of the year is determined by the combination of your axial tilt and distance from the Sun, and that was all.

Earth in orbit around the Sun and its axis of rotation. The seasons of all the worlds in our Solar system determined either by the slope of the axis or elongation of the orbit, or both, and others

At first glance, the conditions are quite commonplace and many planets get along well with them. But each of them has serious shortcomings in describing the world, which could be Westeros:

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• If the planet is in a binary system of stars belong to two stars. This solution is dynamically unstable and can throw the planet into interstellar space.
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• If the past will be a swarm of large planets, periodically shaking the orbit of the planet. Such gravitational intruders, if you are big enough to change the orbit, most likely, will make the world uninhabitable due to changes in the orbit.
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• If near is changing the world orbit like the satellites of Saturn, Janus and Epimetheus. However, in this case, there will be two stable probability, and not chaotic, unpredictable winters like the ones shown in the "Game of thrones".

This picture taken by the Hubble space telescope, shows all five satellites of Pluto in orbit this dwarf planet. The orbital path is added by hand, but are in resonance 1:3:4:5:6 all rotate in the same plane with a deviation of one degree. The four outer satellites beyond Charon constantly hang out instead of rotate around a specific axis.

But there is an option that works, and an example of what is in front of us. Beyond Neptune lies the Pluto system — Charon, which will provide us with a suitable site. Pluto and Charon locked relative to each other, but immediately behind them are four other satellites: Styx, nix, Kerberos and Hydra. If Pluto and Charon were merged into one mass, all four of these satellites would be tidal locked, that is, would look always to its parent world one side. If you replace this single world is double, in which the objects are comparable and larger mass than the outer moons, all, they will randomly hang.

To make the world of Westeros, we just need all this to increase. Instead of a small object the size of asteroid dangling from the binary system of dwarf planets, we need an object the size of Earth, circling two gas giants. If, for example, take a planet the size of Saturn, with nearby super-earths or massive gas giant, orbited by the solid core of Jupiter, the satellites of any of these double worlds and even moons the size of Earth — will inherit a chaotic sloshing behavior. Night and day in this world will not disappear because it will be spinning relative to the Sun, but the rotation axis will behave in an unpredictable manner. This will lead to the spread of the seasons and lengths of day and night and may lead to years of darkness.

Planetary collision in the early stages of the formation of the solar system may lead to the emergence of double planets, maybe even a pair of giant worlds. Any satellites next to them will be spinning, as well as dangle because of the mutual gravitational effects

There are several ways to create such a dense, massive double object, but the simplest of them will be a massive clash of two young gas giants in the first 100 million years of the formation of the Solar system. Under certain parameters of the orbit can form a large gas giant with a small but massive planet companion — several times heavier than Earth. Gas giant and its massive companion will be tidal locked, ensuring stable foreign satellites orbit with the unstable axes of rotation. In such a system orbit around the two giants can take as little as 24 hours (as in Saturn's moon Mimas), but the change of the axis of rotation will cause the seasons to be wildly unpredictable.

From the surface of a world orbiting a giant double planet, you will see the two worlds alternately, and sometimes simultaneously. One is bigger than the other. The night will be beautiful

You Live on such a planet, you would know that winter is coming. Can even be a region like the North, which are consistently colder than the rest of the continent for tens of thousands of years. But how long is the winter after the attack, how it will be severe, it will determine not magic, but the gravitational pull of the Sun and twin planets, around which your world revolves. And it's not just in the winter. With the help of geo-engineering we could create a planetary system that will reign eternal summer, which in Westeros could only dream of.