Die Exoplanet -Volkszählung identifiziert die Lücke von „fehlenden Planeten“
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exoplanet-census-identifies-missing-planets-gap/?utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit
Die Exoplanet -Volkszählung identifiziert die Lücke von „fehlenden Planeten“
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exoplanet-census-identifies-missing-planets-gap/?utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_medium=social&utm_source=reddit
2 Kommentare
>As the Kepler sample [of exoplanets] grew, a mystery became more and more apparent. Astronomers saw a striking dearth of planets with sizes around 1.6 to 1.9 Earth radii, which they called the radius gap.
>[…]
>Adding further intrigue to this puzzle is a phenomenon known as the “hot Neptune desert.” Planets the size of Neptune are conspicuously absent on orbits shorter than about three days. … Scientists think the hot Neptune desert is therefore a more extreme case of the same processes shaping the radius gap.
>[…]
>Recent observations have begun to catch some of these situations in action, providing direct evidence of atmospheric escape.
>[…]
>Our findings and others show how photoevaporation can help explain both the radius gap and the hot Neptune desert by demonstrating this mass-loss process in real time.
>[…]
>NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite mission is conducting extended monitoring over long timescales that could reveal planets with slightly wider orbits around their stars than most known worlds have. … The big leap forward should come when some big-ticket telescopes come online in the next decades.
This article is a great read for armchair astronomers to catch up on the latest in exoplanet news. It’s an exciting time to be looking up at the stars!
**TL;DR:**
• The first confirmed exoplanets were discovered in 1992 orbiting a pulsar. The real breakthrough came in 1995 with the discovery of 51 Pegasi b, the first exoplanet found orbiting a sun-like star.
• This world defied all expectations. It was a behemoth half the mass of Jupiter but orbiting astonishingly close to its star, whipping around it once every 4.2 days.
• At such proximity the planet would broil at around 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, hot enough to vaporize some metals. If massive planets could form so close to their stars and move there later, what other unexpected arrangements might exist? We want to know whether our planet is rare—or whether the conditions that allowed life to arise here might be plentiful out there.
• The more massive and the closer the planet and its orbit, the easier it is to detect its stellar wobble and the more difficult it is for astronomers to detect the planet’s mass and orbit. The first hot Jupiters were found with this method.
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