The universe is filled with wild and unusual things.

Some of them are so weird that they seem like they come right out of science fiction.

One example of this is when there is a binary star system that is orbited by a large planet that travels along a polar path of the two stars. So, instead of revolving in the same direction as the stars ar around each other, it revolves ‘up and down’ in comparison to the ‘side to side’ of the stars.

This is something that astronomers have long theorized would be possible, but up until recently, they didn’t know it actually existed.

To be clear, it is still not a certainty, but according to current data, it seems likely. The team of researchers published a paper in the journal Science Advances. The stars in question were first discovered in 2018. They are two brown dwarf stars that orbit each other.

Brown dwarfs are stellar objects that are large, but never got up to a point of sufficient mass to start fusing hydrogen, so they don’t ‘burn’ like other stars.

This system is only the second time that astronomers have found two brown dwarfs in a binary star system.Brown dwarfs are commonly found in binary systems, but they are paired with another type of typically more massive star.

Additional research revealed that there was another object in this system. A large planet named 2M1510. In binary star systems, planets have always been found to orbit the stars along the same plane as the stars themselves are traveling. In this one, however, the planet is going up and down along the polar plane of the two brown dwarf stars.

This is easier to grasp by looking at it, so check out this video made by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) that shows an animated example of how this planet’s orbit may look:

The lead author of the paper, Thomas Baycrot, is a graduate researchers at the University of Birmingham. He told IFLScience about his findings, saying:

“The orbits of the brown dwarfs are eccentric. They’re on elliptical orbits. What we found is that the ellipse is moving, so it’s precessing in time, so it’s changing its orientation. That is an effect that is known to happen. Mercury’s precession was a test of general relativity back in the early 20th century. In the case of Mercury, the precession is positive or prograde: it’s in the same direction as the orbit. Whereas in this case it’s retrograde, backwards.”

The team does not know how or why the planet got into this unusual orbit, though they have some theories. It could have been caused by a third brown dwarf in the system that hasn’t been detected yet. It could also be that the planet itself is sufficiently large (a gas giant, likely) that its gravity, along with the two stars, formed its path.

Whatever the case, it is very interesting and will undoubtedly result in a lot more study of this system. Much of the data has come from the European Space Agency’s Gaia space telescope, which is being retired after gathering information on over 1 billion stars, including this binary star system.

Whatever caused this very rare orbital path it warrants a lot more research.

If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about a second giant hole has opened up on the sun’s surface. Here’s what it means.