The Universe sometimes likes to mock us. Such is the case with exoplanets. Once upon a time, researchers would sagely say, “Solar Systems like Tatooine, with twin stars, likely don’t exist.” The thing is, this was based on models that relied on limits created with human minds, and reality is a lot more creative than we are. Over the years, we’ve found just about every kind of planet in just about every kind of situation: They snuggle with their stars. They run loose through the galaxy. They’ve been seen orbiting one star in a binary system. They’ve been seen orbiting both stars in the binary...

Let’s look at a world 635 lightyears away that just might have a fiery moon of volcanic goodness. To be honest, every aspect of this system is hot. The star is similar our Sun, but the planet is on an 2.8 day orbit around that star, and this orbit makes Mercury look...