5005 Exoplanets Confirmed by NASA

[Spinward Flow]

5005 Exoplanets have been confirmed by observations.
What's interesting though is the distribution of the planetary results from those confirmations.

• 30% Gas Giants: Size of Saturn or Jupiter or many times bigger.They can be hotter than some stars!
• 35% Neptune-like: Similar in size to Neptune or Uranus. They can be Ice Giants or much warmer. "Warm" Neptunes are more rare.
• 31% Super Earth: Planets that range in size between Earth and Neptune and don't exist in our solar system. They might be rocky worlds like Earth, while mini-Neptunes might be shrouded in puffy atmospheres.
• 4% Terrestrial: Small rocky planets the same size or smaller than Earth.

So if anyone is of a mind to revamp the LBB6 Extended System Generation scheme at any point ... there would need to be some pretty serious "unskewing" going on away from world sizes of 2-8 in terms of bias for mainworlds. The whole 2D-2 system certainly worked just fine for world sizes back in the late 70s/early 80s Traveller ... but as usual, reality is far more interesting than even that system could have imagined.

 

[BlackBat242]

5005 Exoplanets have been confirmed by observations.
What's interesting though is the distribution of the planetary results from those confirmations.

• 30% Gas Giants: Size of Saturn or Jupiter or many times bigger.They can be hotter than some stars!
• 35% Neptune-like: Similar in size to Neptune or Uranus. They can be Ice Giants or much warmer. "Warm" Neptunes are more rare.
• 31% Super Earth: Planets that range in size between Earth and Neptune and don't exist in our solar system. They might be rocky worlds like Earth, while mini-Neptunes might be shrouded in puffy atmospheres.
• 4% Terrestrial: Small rocky planets the same size or smaller than Earth.

So if anyone is of a mind to revamp the LBB6 Extended System Generation scheme at any point ... there would need to be some pretty serious "unskewing" going on away from world sizes of 2-8 in terms of bias for mainworlds. The whole 2D-2 system certainly worked just fine for world sizes back in the late 70s/early 80s Traveller ... but as usual, reality is far more interesting than even that system could have imagined.

The only problem* with taking such "findings" as "established fact" is that the state of our science means that detecting smaller planets is still MUCH harder than detecting large ones... meaning that there is a strong probability that the vast majority of smaller planets that might be in the same area covered by current discoveries have simply not been detected.
As is often so true... "the lack of evidence of presence is NOT evidence of non-presence"!


* Other than the fatal error of accepting any "current state of understanding" as a fixed "established permanently-correct fact".

Actual, real, true science is never "settled and unquestionable" - that is the sole province of religion, true science ALWAYS describes its findings as "as far as is known at this time" or "what we have learned with our current capabilities".

 

[aramis]

Another > 8000 candidates are known.

The thing is, @Spinward Flow , the methodologies are biased heavily to larger worlds.
A cool GG is axiomatically further out than a hot one, thus harder to detect by radial velocity and by eclipsing.
A large GG is axiomatically a stronger signal than a smaller one, and thus easier to spot by eclipsing, and it will have a larger wobble as well.

Same issues with superterrans vs terrans... most of which are by eclipsing.

 

[Dragoner]

太陽系外惑星データベース – Extrasolar Planet's Catalogue produced by Kyoto University

www.exoplanetkyoto.org

This is also a interesting catalog, that I used in making Solis.

 

[Spinward Flow]

the methodologies are biased heavily to larger worlds.

True ... but everywhere we look we keep finding examples that point towards the conclusion that our own solar system is REALLY WEIRD and something of an outlier in terms of composition.

 

[aramis]

True ... but everywhere we look we keep finding examples that point towards the conclusion that our own solar system is REALLY WEIRD and something of an outlier in terms of composition.

Not really.
We have a range of planets - most systems we've been able to measure seem to.
We lack superjovians.
We lack hot jovians
We lack a super terrestrial.

But we can't be certain that a supterterrestrial isn't the cause of the ice giants (Uranus/Neptune).
We do have worlds within the ranges that are detected commonly: Mercury and Venus. And some minor bodies. (98 known venus crossers).

We don't know about post-habitable-zone worlds in other systems at all - calling us weird when we cannot check even nearby systems for cold-zones large bodies is literally leaping off a cliff, hoping there's an airbag below...

For example, to detect a jovian or saturnian distance orbit around another G-v star, in the post-habitable orbits, you're looking at minimum periods in the double digit years. Uranus/Neptune range, we're talking CENTURIES of observation needed for both transit and radial velocity methods.

We don't have an orbital interferometer to make good direct observations; The Centauri system (A, B, Proxima) is right about halfway to the limit of current hardware in orbit, and due to atmosphere, completely beyond current ground hardware.

A dual-3m mirror interferometer would give us the ability to search for planets by reflected light direct observation... but it got cancelled.

 

[coliver988]

And I'll refer back to an older thread: https://www.travellerrpg.com/index....t-overly-worry-about-system-generation.40579/

I just don't worry about it anymore: things keep changing from what was once "that just can never, ever happen" to "oh, look, it just happened". So play the game (and this is a game) so that it is fun. I'll generate systems using book 6 mostly because it is fun. And if I need to tweak or have something odd in there, plop it on in. In an near infinite universe, any non-zero probability is bound to happen somewhere.

 

[robject]

I just don't worry about it anymore: things keep changing from what was once "that just can never, ever happen" to "oh, look, it just happened".

^ This.

Our solar system is really still quite an overwhelming data point; knowing that there's a Gas Giant 30 light-years away doesn't really help us fill out our sector map yet. I mean, it's a start, but meh.

End of the day: Book 6 used the solar system as the model and never apologized. There's no reason to apologize now.

---

Anyone remember 15 or 20 years ago when someone suggested we re-do the map, where almost all of the stars are red dwarfs and there's essentially no habitable planets? It can be a fun and interesting ATU, but not a retcon: Charted Space was designed for itself.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Charted Space was designed for itself.

Charted Space was designed to be habitable and therefore playable.

Fixed that for you.

 

[coliver988]

more fun exo-planets

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/these-10-super-extreme-exoplanets-are-out-of-this-world

 

[kilemall]

One thing to keep in mind about the low small rocky count- could be that way because they are harder to detect and the percentages are actually more like our system…