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Researchers have discovered the mystery behind the formation of circumbinary planets. Circumbinary planets are those bodies whose orbit encompasses two stars.  

Using Kepler space telescope, they discovered the reason responsible for the formation of Kepler-34(AB) - a circumbinary planet. They noted that there were few environments more extreme than a binary star system that causes planets to form. Powerful gravitational perturbations from the two stars on the rocky building blocks of planets often leads to destructive collisions that eventually grinds down the material, they said. 

A team of researchers, headed by Dr. Zoe Leinhardt from Bristol's School of Physics have developed a series of computer simulations depicting early stages of formation around the binary stars using a sophisticated model. The developed model calculates the effect of gravity and physical collisions on and between one million planetary building blocks. 

"Our simulations show that the circumbinary disk is a hostile environment even for large, gravitationally strong objects.  Taking into account data on collisions as well as the physical growth rate of planets, we found that Kepler 34(AB)b would have struggled to grow where we find it now," said Dr Leinhardt in a press release. 

Researchers also found that the majority of the planets might have formed far away from the central binary stars and subsequently migrated to their current location. 

The conclusions made for Kepler-34, they believed that all the currently known circumbinary planets would also have migrated significantly from their original location of formation. However the pointed the possible exception as Kepler-47 (AB)c that is far away from the binary stars than any of the other circumbinary planets. 

Circumbinary planets have captured the imagination of many science-fiction writers and film-makers - our research shows just how remarkable such planets are.  Understanding more about where they form will assist future exoplanet discovery missions in the hunt for earth-like planets in binary star systems," said Stefan Lines, lead author of the study, in the press release. 

The research has been published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.