Before 1995, I didn't see many astronomers seriously considering such
worlds, if at all.
When the RAND Corporation did some of the first computer generations
of potential alien solar systems, most of them looked a lot like ours.
Only one had a giant world closest to the star. When Carl Sagan
revised RAND results for his Cosmos series in 1980 (you can see the
chart in the companion book as well), it still only had one system with
what we would now call a Hot Jupiter. The caption gave the definite
impression that such a system was a fluke and that most systems would
be like ours, with little rocky worlds close to the star and the big gassy
ones in the outer regions.
Even though we have only found 300 such systems so far for the reasons
you say, this also means that the odds declare there are lots more such
systems out there. And if the models for their formation are correct,
this means that these planetary monsters knocked a lot of terrestrial
type worlds out in the process - though maybe they formed after the
HJs moved inward.
But here I go, assuming that life has to appear just on Earth-type worlds.
Space/Science » in reply to Selection effect
I know, but...
The whole thread (35 posts)
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