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I don't stay up on the latest developments in this field day to day, but my understanding is that most of the extrasolar systems that we can observe are a littl

I don't stay up on the latest developments in this field day to day, but my understanding is that most of the extrasolar systems that we can observe are a little on the wonky side to begin with, otherwise we wouldn't be able to detect that there are planets in them at all. Super-Jupiters orbiting close enough to make their stars wobble, binary star systems, all kinds of stuff. I'm not sure I'd hazard a guess at any kind of definite conclusion at the makeup of the universe and our overall specialness in it, with tools of observation as crude and limited as we've still got; there's a long way to go just to survey what is out there.

dwaltrip 8y ago
I believe the article attempts to account for your concern.
- orbitingpluto 8y ago
  Humanity has only been searching for exoplanets for a very short time. That's why there are relatively few candidates farther than 1 AU out. It's somewhat like arguing that all lattes are comprised of milk only because we've only taken the first sip.
  - spectre256 8y ago
    I'm not sure why you were downvoted, that's a beautiful analogy.
- KnightOfWords 8y ago
  The author may well have found a real pattern, but it may only apply to a subset of planetary systems. Kepler is biased towards detecting large planets with short orbital periods. Perhaps tightly packed systems have similar sized planets because this is a more stable arrangement. However, more widely spaced systems - which we have far less data on - may not show this pattern. We're learning something here but we don't really have enough information to know how remarkable our solar system is.
dgudkov 8y ago
I wonder which planets Kepler would see if someone used it to look at the Solar system from a far distance.
- captaincrowbar 8y ago
  It's regularly detecting exoplanets down to slightly less than Earth-sized now, so assuming the orbits happened to be aligned the right way to make transits detectable at all, it should be able to detect all the planets except Mercury and Mars. Our hypothetical alien astronomers would put us down as a six-planet system, possibly worth a paper or two and a page in Alien Wikipedia :)
  - KnightOfWords 8y ago
    > It's regularly detecting exoplanets down to slightly less than Earth-sized now... But at what distance from the host star can it detect planets of this size?

dwaltrip 8y ago

I believe the article attempts to account for your concern.

orbitingpluto 8y ago
Humanity has only been searching for exoplanets for a very short time. That's why there are relatively few candidates farther than 1 AU out. It's somewhat like arguing that all lattes are comprised of milk only because we've only taken the first sip.
- spectre256 8y ago
  I'm not sure why you were downvoted, that's a beautiful analogy.
KnightOfWords 8y ago
The author may well have found a real pattern, but it may only apply to a subset of planetary systems. Kepler is biased towards detecting large planets with short orbital periods. Perhaps tightly packed systems have similar sized planets because this is a more stable arrangement. However, more widely spaced systems - which we have far less data on - may not show this pattern. We're learning something here but we don't really have enough information to know how remarkable our solar system is.

dgudkov 8y ago

I wonder which planets Kepler would see if someone used it to look at the Solar system from a far distance.

captaincrowbar 8y ago
It's regularly detecting exoplanets down to slightly less than Earth-sized now, so assuming the orbits happened to be aligned the right way to make transits detectable at all, it should be able to detect all the planets except Mercury and Mars. Our hypothetical alien astronomers would put us down as a six-planet system, possibly worth a paper or two and a page in Alien Wikipedia :)
- KnightOfWords 8y ago
  > It's regularly detecting exoplanets down to slightly less than Earth-sized now... But at what distance from the host star can it detect planets of this size?