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That'll take a while. There's currently no way to detect solar system analoges with current technology and the amount of collected data. Radial velocity requir
by qayxc 2y ago
That'll take a while. There's currently no way to detect solar system analoges with current technology and the amount of collected data.
Radial velocity requires about two orders of magnitude better detectors, astrometry requires about one order of magnitude more sensitive instruments, transit photometry requires more time, and finally direct imaging isn't currently feasible for G-type stars like our sun.
In any case, other than direct imaging, all methods would require approximately 40 years of data. Here's why: in order to confirm an observation, you'd need to observe at the very least two orbits.
For Venus and Earth that'd be about 2 years of data. For Mars that'd be about 4 years of data and beyond that, we're talking decades:
~24 years for a Jupiter analog
~60 years for a Saturn analog
~168 years for a Uranus analog
~330 years for a Neptune analog
So even a more compact Sol-system analog would require at least a couple of decades of data.
About the water question, that's even harder. Now we're talking direct imaging at resolutions that'd require a leap in technology and capabilities. While mass and radius can easily be determined by a combination of techniques and atmospheres can be analysed if transit photometry is possible, surface composition cannot be determined that way.
Though there have been proposals to infer liquid surface water indirectly from atmospheric composition, I remain very sceptical about such approaches. Planetary geology is quite diverse even in our own system. Such inferred results would need to rest on many shaky assumptions that are hard to test and confirm.
The last question is easily answered - once we can reliably detect Earth-sized worlds around G- and K-type stars, we can get reliable statistics going. So far, observation bias limits us to M-dwarfs (a very alien environment compared to our system) and gas/ice giants when it comes to finding planets (the latter are big enough for both radial velocity methods and transit photometry around G-type stars).
- echelon 2y agoThis is fantastic, thank you! > and finally direct imaging isn't currently feasible for G-type stars like our sun. > Radial velocity requires about two orders of magnitude better detectors, astrometry requires about one order of magnitude more sensitive instruments, > direct imaging at resolutions that'd require a leap in technology and capabilities. Any wild guess for when we'll be able to build these? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQFqDKRAROI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQFqDKRAROI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_gravitational_lens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_gravitational_lens Is this feasible at all?
- qayxc 2y ago> Is this feasible at all? From an engineering perspective: absolutely! There's still some major hurdles when it comes to propulsion, communication, and station-keeping, but the basics are all there already. The sad part is that such telescopes would cost a lot of money. I mean a lot of money. From a pure engineering perspective I would image 20-30 years and we'd have such telescope. I'm not at all optimistic about the budget part, though, as NASA and the US private sector have been fixated on Mars for the past five decades. ESA is too disjointed for such project (22 + 5 member nations and associated nations), the Chinese are busy claiming the Moon, and the Russians are broke and never made it to the outer solar system anyway...