The prevailing opinion in those days was that radiation near the star would boil off the volatiles, leaving small rocky worlds, and the gas giants would predominate in the outer cold.
And with our one data point, observation agreed with theory. Even if the system properties we are seeing now are skewed by selection effects, they are certainly unexpected and exciting. Nature never seems to tire of pulling practical jokes on us.
As for the "inwardly migrated hot jovians", and their subsequent effects on habitable zone planets, they made perfect sense for dynamical reasons AFTER we decided to take a second look at the kinematics of proto solar systems. Nothing like a few extra data points to keep the theoreticians honest, although to be fair to them, there's not much point in theorizing when data is unobtainable.
There still is plenty of statistical space left for earthlike worlds and conventional life forms; at least for now, but we now have other possibilities too.
Space/Science » in reply to I know, but...
They had good reasons for being wrong...as always.
The whole thread (35 posts)
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