Our Solar System is Stranger than we Thought - Scientific American

[Colonel Kenney]

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/our-solar-system-is-even-stranger-than-we-thought/

"New research shows a pattern of exoplanet sizes and spacing around other stars unlike what we see in our own system

How special is the solar system? The history of astronomy has mostly been a one-way journey from a worldview in which our solar system is orderly (and divine) to a view in which we are not special. Our solar system’s planets, once thought to dance in god-ordained perfect circles in a “music of the spheres,” deviate from circular orbits. Johannes Kepler, who demonstrated the non-circular orbits of the planets, tried to restore a sense of heavenliness by latching onto a new pattern for their orbits based on Plato’s mathematical solids—but that notion was discredited many years later with the discovery of Uranus.

So when, on a sunny afternoon in California last year, I discovered a set of patterns that seem to rule planetary systems other than our own, I was skeptical. Were these patterns real, or were they an illusion? And if real, what did they mean about our solar system’s place in the cosmos?"



Has David Braben read this? Can he make some adjustments to the stellar forge and recreate some unexplored systems to new rules?

 

[cmdr underhill]

I'm not really sold on the hypothesis that our system is particularly unusual. Our methods are currently more able to find worlds in tighter orbits than we have here at home. Remember that Jupiter takes almost 12 years to make an orbit, Saturn almost 30. We have been observing stellar transits for less than 10 years. Other methods are even harder to produce reliable detections.

I'm not going to rule it out right away, but I'd be surprised if a system like ours was less common than 1 in 1000

 

[Sapyx]

Can he make some adjustments to the stellar forge and recreate some unexplored systems to new rules?

Sorry, that's not how procedural generation works. They can't "make adjustments to the stellar forge" without completely deleting the galaxy and starting again. Because the Stellar Forge doesn't fire up only when a never-before-seen star system gets visited for the first time. It fires up every single time anyone ever arrives at any procedurally-generated star system. That's the beauty of procedural generation: you can create a vast number of star systems with random contents, quickly, without needing an equally vast database to store all that data. So any changes to the algorithms wouldn't apply just to Unexplored star systems, they would apply to every star system in the galaxy. And stars and planet's you'd previously discovered and explored in systems ghenerated by the old algorithms would suddenly "disappear".

 

[Para Handy]

I have never taken to the "oligarch" theory but then again I am not a Postdoctoral Research Fellow.

 

[Sapyx]

I would also agree that we shouldn't go around redefining what is "normal" until we have good enough data to know what "normal" is. Our current technology cannot even detect an Earth-sized planet in an Earth-like orbit around a Sun-like star, unless we get really, really lucky with our stellar/planetary orbital plane alignments.

Analogy: you are scanning the Earth from orbit, looking for native animals. But because your scan resolution is really, really, low, you can't see lifeforms with a top-down surface area smaller than 5 square metres. So, after conducting your scan, you might be tempted to conclude that "normal" Earth-life was the size of elephants, rhinos and whales - because that's all you can clearly see. But your data set is skewed towards detecting larger lifeforms, because that's all you can detect. Surely it would be better to wait and not judge what "normal Earth life" was like until after you can get much better resolution scanners, or, even better, can go down to the surface and take some samples.

 

[varonica]

I would also agree that we shouldn't go around redefining what is "normal" until we have good enough data to know what "normal" is.

Agreed entirely. The vanishingly small number of systems we have been able to examine compared to the total out there is no indication of normal. It may be that we are only getting a good look at these ones "because" they are abnormal. I mean spotting a gas giant in clsoe orbit around a star across stellar distances is surely much easier than spotting say a mercury sized body, so the fact these systems stand out may be because they do indeed stand out as being "abnormal".

We need a much larger sample to define normal.

 

[Pinda Gupta]

I'd agree with many of the statements made, and would add that the data presented is extremely preliminary (not necessarily to say that it's wrong, but to say that more research is required).
Our method of locating exoplanets is also, currently, quite primitive. If you take a look at the current list of terrestrial exoplanet candidates (found here) you'll notice that not a single one is of Earth-mass or lower (the TRAPPIST-1 planets are likely smaller than Earth, but I hesitate to make that statement without more data). Our current imaging can only reveal planets that are either extremely close to their parent star or are gargantuan. Think about it this way: if an alien in the Alpha Centauri system used our current technology to view our Solar System, he'd only see Jupiter and perhaps Saturn. The other terrestrial planets are far too small to see, and Uranus/Neptune are too far away from the Sun. Thus, he'd want to conclude that Alpha Centauri was special. He'd completely miss Earth!
Another truth is that humans have more knowledge of the Solar System than any other star system in existence. Even Proxima Centauri -- the closest star system to the Sun -- is still a mystery and potential evidence for new planets is being found constantly.
Even in our own Solar System, it's quite possible that we simply haven't found an enormous ninth planet. There was much talk in the news about this recently, and scientists are still looking for it...so far to no avail. As Underhill, Sapyx, and Varonica have stated, I'd hesitate to redefining what "normal" means for star systems without full knowledge of even our own system.

If only we could just jump in an Asp Explorer and head out to the heavens

 

[Sapyx]

Think about it this way: if an alien in the Alpha Centauri system used our current technology to view our Solar System, he'd only see Jupiter and perhaps Saturn. The other terrestrial planets are far too small to see, and Uranus/Neptune are too far away from the Sun. Thus, he'd want to conclude that Alpha Centauri was special. He'd completely miss Earth!

Even spotting Jupiter and Saturn would be tricky, particularly as Sol is above average in terms of brightness. And someone in Alpha Centauri couldn't detect any planets in Sol system at all using the occultation method (which we used to find the Trappist-1 planets), because Sol's planetary orbital plane is not aligned with Alpha Centauri. They might - might - surmise the existence of one or two large outer planets by watching the position of Sol wobble back and forth over many years, but the exact number, size and orbital parameters of the planets in Sol system would remain a mystery to them until they got much better tech - good enough to physically see the light from the planets.

 

[Eros]

As already stated,

Our knowledge of the subject suffers heavily from selection bias. Our methods for searching for exoplanets limits us to high mass, short orbital period, or transits basically. This is by no means giving us the capability to see a planet like the Earth orbit a star like the sun.

To look at this pattern and be ignorant of the bias on the method is to completely miss the point.

Its similar to when people say "The sun is just an ordinary star" because next to the giant stars out there, yeah it appears insignificant. If you do any amount of research though you will see that no, actually the sun is pretty interesting in a round about way given the following facts

1) The Sun is hotter and larger than about 80% of the others in the local vicinity
2) The Sun has high metallicity in comparison to the local group of stars
3) The Sun is a single star, up to about 40-50% of stars are typically in multiples.

Just these alone set it apart... does it mean in some way that Sol and its planets are some kind of special life yielding place... no... im pretty sure given statistics that there are many places like it.

 

[marx]

Also, I haven't done in-depth analysis of how various planets are distributed in Elite's systems, but I think many will agree that there are plenty which have a fairly uniform range of planets already. No gas giants, "just" a bunch of relatively similar-sized planets, mostly HMCPs. There are, of course, systems which are pretty much the opposite: a nice effect of how the Stellar Forge handles system masses and whatnot.

In the end though, it's a game first and a galaxy simulation second, so it only makes sense that you'd want more variety (within acceptable bounds), not less.

 

[Colonel Kenney]

Sorry, that's not how procedural generation works. They can't "make adjustments to the stellar forge" without completely deleting the galaxy and starting again. Because the Stellar Forge doesn't fire up only when a never-before-seen star system gets visited for the first time. It fires up every single time anyone ever arrives at any procedurally-generated star system. That's the beauty of procedural generation: you can create a vast number of star systems with random contents, quickly, without needing an equally vast database to store all that data. So any changes to the algorithms wouldn't apply just to Unexplored star systems, they would apply to every star system in the galaxy. And stars and planet's you'd previously discovered and explored in systems ghenerated by the old algorithms would suddenly "disappear".

Very easily they could.

With a simple update query they can selectively write to tables and entries that match specific criteria. I know it would be a massive but could be done in quadrants. If system = not explored by any PC it can be rewritten offline and pushed in one of the next updates if even necessary. Most of that data if I recall is loaded from the internet anyway.

 

[Colonel Kenney]

Agreed entirely. The vanishingly small number of systems we have been able to examine compared to the total out there is no indication of normal. It may be that we are only getting a good look at these ones "because" they are abnormal. I mean spotting a gas giant in clsoe orbit around a star across stellar distances is surely much easier than spotting say a mercury sized body, so the fact these systems stand out may be because they do indeed stand out as being "abnormal".

We need a much larger sample to define normal.

How many systems in ED have you seen that look anything like Keplers discoveries? None. None are in a state of creation or destruction or highly elliptical orbits. Its like our galaxy was generated to be ultimately and utterly "stable"

 

[ruger_shooter]

Elite Dangerous is a game. Some people seem to forget this.

 

[Sapyx]

How many systems in ED have you seen that look anything like Keplers discoveries? None. None are in a state of creation or destruction or highly elliptical orbits. Its like our galaxy was generated to be ultimately and utterly "stable"

There are plenty of planets with highly elliptical orbits, especially in younger stars like T Tauris. But it's true, there are no protoplanetary discs, and no "unstable" orbits where planets will go smashing into stars or other planets. Again, because it's hard to create a dynamically interacting galaxy with procedural generation. Not "impossible", just really really hard.

A good example is the rocks in planetary rings. They can rotate, but they never move relative to each other - they're fixed in place like bugs stuck in amber; the game treats "the ring" as a single giant rigid object. A "realistic" ring is highly dynamic, with individual ring particles constantly interacting with each other, like cars on a billion-lane freeway.