...we have two suns?

We are used to having one sun. It keeps us warm and has a big impact on our climate on earth. Without the sun we wouldn’t be able to live here.

The sun radiates light and heat. Plants need sunlight to grow and we as well as the animals need it for food. We use the oxygen which plants make. But it also gives us energy. It heats our planet and stirs our atmosphere. But you can imagine having two suns? How would it infect us and would it even possible to live with two suns in our solar system? For our category what if, I will talk about that now.

Indeed, in our universe, it is even more common to have multiple star systems. So, star systems which form around more stars. It would be even possible to have two suns but only under certain conditions:

Especially, if one of the stars is pretty big and bright, it would probably course an unstable Earth´s orbit. The result is a strong gravitation which could even lead the earth coming closer to the sun. This would be too hot for all of us and life on earth would not be convincible. However, if the gravitational pull of the suns isn’t strong enough, it would just course that we move out of our solar system. Obviously, we wouldn’t survive it either.

But just imagine the two suns wouldn’t cause any gravitational problems by having only one sun for the Earth orbit. The Earth's orbit would be stable at least. However, this would not allow us to have a good or suitable life on our planet. The two suns would just be in front of both sides of the earth which would cause no dark nights at all. Moreover, we would have the problem of a lot of UV radiation and solar winds. This would also mean that going outside of the house without getting a sunburn is nearly impossible, even if you put sunscreen on your skin. Accordingly, it would also change our climates: weather and daily circumstances.

A solution for that could be to have two suns, each one of them half size and as bright as our current sun in our solar system. This means two stars of the same size but each only 85% of the mass of our sun. We would just have shorter days: 280 days instead of 365 because of the total gravity of the two suns.

So, in general it is possible to have two suns and could sustain life on the earth at the same time. We just need a perfect balance between the two stars: the size of the double suns and the distance from earth because as long as the distance between the stars and the planet is more than 4 times greater than the distance between the two suns, it would course that the orbit would be still stable. But of course, one sun is still enough for us, it gives us beautiful sunsets and enough heat for all of us animals, plants and humans as well as other benefits which I already mentioned in the beginning.

 Source: https://insh.world/science/what-if-we-had-two-suns/