With a little imagination you could call it “cosmic music”: six planets orbiting their sun in a very precise rhythm. Every time the first planet makes three revolutions, the second planet makes two revolutions. If he made three rounds, the third one made two rounds.

The planets have been orbiting the Sun in the same rhythm for at least a billion years, as if dancing a waltz. The mutual relationship in their movement has remained unchanged throughout this time.

This was discovered with the help of the European Space Agency’s Khufu mission. The planets in the constellation Coma Berenice, also known as Cape Verde, are located about a hundred light-years from Earth. The results of the study are published In the scientific journal Nature.

This animation explains the similarity to musical rhythm:

The planets were discovered because their sun, the star HD110067, is sometimes slightly brighter. This is an indication that there is a planet moving in front of the sun at that moment and blocking the light. Additional study initially showed that there were two planets, and a third planet was soon discovered.

Once the location of the first three planets was known, researchers were able to predict where the remaining planets would be simply using a three-to-two ratio. Observations showed that the other three planets were already in the calculated position.

Scientists call this rhythmic rotation of the planets “resonance,” a term that also occurs in music: its motion is similar to the way the strings of a musical instrument can resonate with each other.

When solar systems form, the planets often orbit the sun in a certain rhythm. But major events, such as the collision of space rocks or the shifting positions of planets, will sooner or later put an end to this regularity in 99% of all solar systems. This has also happened in our solar system.

“This likely has something to do with the formation and motion of Jupiter and Saturn,” explains lead researcher Raphael Luke. “Many scientists today assume that these two planets swapped places at some point. This likely caused a domino effect that caused the planets to lose their resonance.”

This does not mean that resonance no longer occurs in our solar system. Three of Jupiter’s four largest moons orbit the planet at a constant rhythm. If the first moon makes one circle, the next moon makes two, and the third makes twice that: four.

Don’t expect life on newly discovered planets. Even the coldest of the six planets has a temperature of about 170 degrees, that’s how close they are to the sun. It can best be compared to Neptune in our solar system: a rocky core surrounded by a thick atmosphere, possibly containing helium and hydrogen.