Exoplanets & Exomoons

Investigating Planet Formation and Evolutionary Processes with Short-Period Exoplanets

By Keith Cowing
Press Release
astro-ph.EP
March 30, 2018
Filed under
Investigating Planet Formation and Evolutionary Processes with Short-Period Exoplanets
Extrasolar planet
NASA

From wispy gas giants on the verge of disruption to tiny rocky bodies already falling apart, short-period exoplanets pose a severe puzzle to theories of planet formation and orbital evolution.

By far most of the planets known beyond the solar system orbit their stars in much tighter orbits than the most close-in planet in the solar system, Mercury. Short-period planets experienced dynamical and evolutions histories distinct from their farther-out cousins, and so it’s not clear they are representative of all planets. These exoplanets typically have radii between about 1 and 4 Earth radii, whereas the solar system does not contain any planet in this radius range.

And while the most massive planets in the solar system occupy the icy regions beyond about 5 AU from the sun, about 1% of sun-like stars have a Jupiter-mass planet near 0.05 AU, with just a few days of an orbital period. How did these short-period planets get there? Did they form in-situ, or did they migrate towards their contemporary orbits? If they migrated, what prevented them from falling into their stars? Vice versa, could some of the remaining 99% of stars without such a hot Jupiter show evidence of their past consumption of a close-in, massive planet?

The proximity between short-period planets and their host stars naturally facilitates observational studies, and so short-period planets dominate our observational constraints on planetary composition, internal structure, meteorology, and more. This white paper discusses the unique advantages of short-period planets for the theoretical and observational investigations of exoplanets in general and of their host stars.

Brian Jackson, Elisabeth Adams, René Heller, Michael Endl
(Submitted on 27 Mar 2018)

Comments: White Paper submitted to National Academy of Sciences Exoplanet Science Strategy call
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP)
Cite as: arXiv:1803.10293 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:1803.10293v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Brian Jackson
[v1] Tue, 27 Mar 2018 19:50:50 GMT (1170kb,D)
https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.10293
Astrobiology

Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na’Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him) 🖖🏻