Talking about a revolution

Astrophysicists are uncovering planets that echo worlds from the works of James Cameron, Andy Weir and George Lucas. Take a look.

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James Cameron's Avatar (2009) is set on Pandora, a lush, habitable and fictional moon that orbits a gas giant in the very real Alpha Centauri A, which is part of a triple-star system 4.3 light years away from Earth.

This August, NASA astronomers peering through the James Webb Space Telescope found that a gas giant about the size of Saturn does indeed orbit Alpha Centauri A.

Because of its proximity, and the fact that we recognised it as a binary star system as far back as the 1600s, Alpha Centauri has featured prominently in science-fiction.

In Isaac Asimov short stories of the 1940s, humans use hyperspace or faster-than-light travel to get to Alpha Centauri. In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979), an intergalactic bureaucratic office is stationed there.