(ORDO NEWS) — Everything seems to be going well in our solar system: small rocky planets like Venus, Earth or Mars orbit relatively close to our star, while large gas and ice giants like Jupiter, Saturn or Neptune move in wide orbits around Sun.
“More than a decade ago, astronomers noticed, based on observations with the then pioneering Kepler telescope, that planets in other systems typically resemble their respective neighbors in size and mass like peas in a pod,” said study lead author Lokesh Mishra.
But for a long time it was not clear whether this discovery was due to the limitations of observational methods.
“It was impossible to determine whether the planets in any particular system were similar enough to fall into the class of ‘pea-in-a-pod’ systems, or whether they were quite different – just like in our solar system,” Mishtra said.
Therefore, the researcher developed a system for determining the differences and similarities between the planets of the same systems. And in doing so, he discovered that there are not two, but four system architectures.
“We call these four classes ‘similar’, ‘ordered’, ‘anti-ordered’ and ‘mixed’,” Mishra explained.
Planetary systems in which the masses of neighboring planets are similar to each other have a similar architecture.
Ordered planetary systems are those in which the mass of the planets tends to increase with distance from the star – just like in the solar system.
If, on the other hand, the mass of the planets roughly decreases with distance from the star, the researchers speak of an anti-ordered architecture of the system.
Mixed architectures also exist, where the masses of the planets in a system vary greatly from planet to planet.
“Our results show that ‘similar’ planetary systems are the most common type of architecture.
Approximately eight out of ten planetary systems around the stars visible in the night sky have a “similar” architecture,” Mishra explained.
“It also explains why evidence of such architecture was found in the first few months of the Kepler mission.
What surprised the team is that “orderly” architecture – one that also includes the solar system – seems to be the rarest class.”
According to Mishra, there are indications that the mass of the disk of gas and dust and the abundance of heavy elements in the star are affecting the architecture of the system.
“From fairly small disks with low mass and stars with a small amount of heavy elements, ‘similar’ planetary systems arise.
Large, massive disks with many heavy elements in the star give rise to more ordered and anti-ordered systems. Mixed systems arise from medium-sized disks.
Dynamic interactions between planets, such as collisions or ejections, affect the final architecture,” Mishra said.
A notable aspect of these results is that they relate the initial conditions for the formation of planets and stars to a measurable property: the architecture of the system.
Between them lie billions of years of evolution. For the first time, scientists have bridged this huge time gap and made testable predictions.
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