[3] Kepler-16b is also unusual in that it falls inside the radius that was thought to be the inner limit for planet formation in a binary star system.

[4] The leader of Kepler-16b's discovery team, Laurance Doyle of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, said of this precision, "I believe this is the best-measured planet outside the solar system".

Based on the stellar characteristics and orbital dynamics, an estimated age of 2 billion years for the system is possible.

Although the chances of life on the gas giant itself are remote, simulations conducted by researchers at the University of Texas suggest that sometime in the system's history, perturbations from other bodies could have caused an Earth-sized planet from the center of the habitable zone to migrate out of its orbit, allowing Kepler-16b to capture it as its moon.

[13] Furthermore, the researchers also considered the possibility of a faraway habitable planet orbiting at about 140 million kilometers away, which could retain the thermal energy needed to keep water liquid through a thick mixture of greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide and methane.

[19] To support an Earth-like atmosphere for about 4.6 billion years (the age of the Earth), the moon would have to have a Mars-like density and at least a mass of 0.07 ME.

[20] One way to decrease loss from sputtering is for the moon to have a strong magnetic field that can deflect stellar wind and radiation belts.

[4] "Again and again we see that the science is stranger and weirder than fiction" said John Knoll, the head visual effects supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic, who worked on several of the movies.