CONSOLIDATING AND CRUSHING EXOPLANETS: DID IT HAPPEN HERE?
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia, 6224 Agricultural Road, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1 (Canada)
The Kepler mission results indicate that systems of tightly packed inner planets (STIPs) are present around of order 5% of FGK field stars (whose median age is ∼5 Gyr). We propose that STIPs initially surrounded nearly all such stars, and those observed are the final survivors of a process in which long-term metastability eventually ceases and the systems proceed to collisional consolidation or destruction, losing roughly equal fractions of systems every decade in time. In this context, we also propose that our solar system initially contained additional large planets interior to the current orbit of Venus, which survived in a metastable dynamical configuration for 1%–10% of the solar system’s age. Long-term gravitational perturbations caused the system orbits to cross, leading to a cataclysmic event that left Mercury as the sole surviving relic.
- OSTI ID:
- 22518952
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal Letters, Journal Name: Astrophysical Journal Letters Journal Issue: 2 Vol. 806; ISSN 2041-8205
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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