Quote:
Originally Posted by Webstral
Now that's exciting! A & B orbit sufficiently distantly from each other that the habitable zone of both planets lies within the "safe" distance about each star; i.e., the gravity from the companion star would not perturb the orbit of a planet orbiting either star within the life zones. Too cool.
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One of the more popular theories surrounding the formation of earth-like planets is that, in our solar system, the gravitational influences of Jupiter and Saturn perturbed the orbits of comets in the Oort Cloud, bringing the comets into the inner system where some of them dumped their water on the Earth and Mars.
The Alpha Centauri A-B-Proxima system doesn't seem to have any large gas giants but the weird interactions of the 3 stars as they orbit each other may have fulfilled a similar role in bringing comets into the habital zones. It's not out of the question that there could be one or more rocky planets in one of the habital zones that received enough cometary water to end up with an Earth-like land-water mix.