Our Solar System Isn't Normal
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Re: Our Solar System Isn't Normal
#2I would argue the exo-planets we have found so far are a very biased sample. We don't have great technologies for detecting solar systems like ours. And at least the first few years of planet hunting we'll tend to find a lot of large giants orbiting close to their stars since they're the easiest to find.
Re: Our Solar System Isn't Normal
#3Kepler has been revolutionary in discovering these 700 odd planetary systems, but we can't even begin to imagine what surprises await for when we point the James Webb Space Telescope at them.
One of JWSTs mission objectives is to study the planetary systems discovered by Kepler, and the origins of life.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope#Miss...
Re: Our Solar System Isn't Normal
#4I would argue the exo-planets we have found so far are a very biased sample. We don't have great technologies for detecting solar systems like ours. And at least the first few years of planet hunting we'll tend to find a lot of large giants orbiting close to their stars since they're the easiest to find.
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Re: Our Solar System Isn't Normal
#5I would argue the exo-planets we have found so far are a very biased sample. We don't have great technologies for detecting solar systems like ours. And at least the first few years of planet hunting we'll tend to find a lot of large giants orbiting close to their stars since they're the easiest to find.
I was very surprised that the article made no mention of such a bias. It was my first thought, too. I'm not terribly up-to-date on how Kepler has been detecting planets, but isn't it due to the 'wobble' of the stars? Surely they'll find planets that orbit faster (and wobble their stars faster) first. It'll take many many years of very consistent observations (or one very lucky day) to see a wobble (or occlusion) from a planet like our Jupiter.
Re: Our Solar System Isn't Normal
#6I would argue the exo-planets we have found so far are a very biased sample. We don't have great technologies for detecting solar systems like ours. And at least the first few years of planet hunting we'll tend to find a lot of large giants orbiting close to their stars since they're the easiest to find.
I was very surprised that the article made no mention of such a bias. It was my first thought, too. I'm not terribly up-to-date on how Kepler has been detecting planets, but isn't it due to the 'wobble' of the stars? Surely they'll find planets that orbit faster (and wobble their stars faster) first. It'll take many many years of very consistent observations (or one very lucky day) to see a wobble (or occlusion) from…
Kepler uses occlusion, not wobbling.
Re: Our Solar System Isn't Normal
#7I would argue the exo-planets we have found so far are a very biased sample. We don't have great technologies for detecting solar systems like ours. And at least the first few years of planet hunting we'll tend to find a lot of large giants orbiting close to their stars since they're the easiest to find.
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Re: Our Solar System Isn't Normal
#8I would argue the exo-planets we have found so far are a very biased sample. We don't have great technologies for detecting solar systems like ours. And at least the first few years of planet hunting we'll tend to find a lot of large giants orbiting close to their stars since they're the easiest to find.
Indeed. Couldn't you just as easily say we used to think our solar system was abnormal because we hadn't discovered any planets around other stars?
Re: Our Solar System Isn't Normal
#9I would argue the exo-planets we have found so far are a very biased sample. We don't have great technologies for detecting solar systems like ours. And at least the first few years of planet hunting we'll tend to find a lot of large giants orbiting close to their stars since they're the easiest to find.
Yeah, that was my first thought too. Sample bias all the way.
1) Things which orbit rapidly are easy to spot as we get lots of observations from occlusion and wobble. You can identify a planet over the course of a few weeks if it has a period measured in days.
2) Things which are massive are easy to detect using wobble methods. The closer in they are, the more wobble there is. GMm/r^2 and all that.
3) Massive close-in things with short periods are the easiest planets to detect by a country mile, as you get a nice big occlusion along with a nice big wobble, all happening on nice short timescales.
This entire article is oriented around sample bias due to current instrumentation and techniques. We have little hope of spotting the equivalent of, say, Uranus, with the same orbital period and distance, as we'd need, um, a good few centuries of observations using wobble and occlusion to be certain - and the net effects measured would be tiny, so you'd need a huge pile of data to get a statistically significant measure.
Finally, earth-mass planets at an earth-like distance - again, tricky. Less tricky than the above, arguably, particularly if they have atmospheres (spectral changes are a dead giveaway), but still tricky.
JWST could serve up the goods.
Re: Our Solar System Isn't Normal
#10It's true that this could still turn out to be mostly observational bias, but I feel like everyone is missing the monkey wandering across the corridor.
The anthropic principle, that is. Isn't it possible that, while gas planets clustered closely around the star is the normal shape of solar systems, such a configuration is not amenable to complex life?