Short Sharp Science: New Planet Record Suggests Our Solar System Is N

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Short Sharp Science 10:31 13 April 2012 One Per Cent Space New Scientist TV Lisa Grossman, reporter CultureLab It's a shame about Pluto. If it still counted as a planet, our sun would still be among the record- Big Wide World holders in the planet stakes. Instead, that crown may have just been stolen by HD 10180, a star 130 light years away that Bookmark&share has mass, temperature, brightness and chemistry similar to the sun. A new report sees evidence for up to nine planets in HD 10180's family, all of which are more massive than the Earth. The finding is one of two suggesting our solar system may not be as weird as we thought.

After our sun, we used to think the stars with the most planets were Kepler-11 and HD 10180:, each appeared to have six orbiting worlds. Then Mikko Tuomi, an astronomer at the University of Hertfordshire, UK, re-examined observations of HD 10180 from the HARPS (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher) spectrograph at the La Silla observatory in Chile. He confirmed the presence of a suspected seventh planet and found new evidence of two more, which would Categories bring the total up to nine.

The suggestion that other solar systems have similar numbers of planets to our own fits with 2010 review growing evidence that ours is not as freakish as earlier evidence suggested. Being Human

The early days of exoplanet hunting mostly turned up bizarre and exotic beasts like hot Jupiters, Neuroscience 2010 behemoths many times larger than Jupiter that orbit scorchingly close to their stars, often in Durban Climate Talks single-planet families. Sometimes their orbits were askance, titled at crazy angles with respect to the star's axis of rotation. Environment Events The new zoo of planets threw doubt on conventional models of planet formation. Based only on our own crowded but orderly family of planets, astronomers had assumed that planets coalesce Fred's Footprint calmly out of a flat disc of gas and dust that circled the star like a record. Hot Jupiters are too From the Editors massive to have formed as close to their stars as they are now, implying a history of planet- Health on-planet violence in which bigger planets tossed smaller ones out in order to migrate inward. Illusions Now though, it seems our orderly orbits might not be so odd. A second study out this week from the EXOEarths collaboration compared data from HARPS, which is sensitive to all planetary Life systems regardless of their orientation with respect to Earth, and the Kepler Space Telescope, Live which can see planets only if they transit, or cross in front of their star as seen from Earth. If Live from the AAAS Kepler sees multiple transits across the same star, that means there must be two or more planets in more or less the same orbital plane. Neuroscience 2010 Obituary EXOEarths team member Pedro Figueira of the University of Porto, Portugal, and colleagues calculated how many such systems Kepler should see, given the frequency of all planetary seen Opinion by HARPS. The results matched what Kepler actually sees. Physics & Math

That means that planets' orbits are probably more often aligned than not, and suggests that Picture of the Day planets often form in a disc without much violent jostling. Politics

"These results show us that the way our solar system formed must be common," Figueira said, Science In Society according to a press release. "Its structure is the same as the other planetary systems we Space studied, with all planets orbiting roughly in the same plane." Sports

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By Russell Horwood New planet record suggests our solar system is normal: The early evidence never suggested that our system was unusual. When you start looking for plan... Sign in to comment, or comment anonymously.

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North Korea will learn little April 2012 (18) from failed spaceshot March 2012 (55) February 2012 (58) New planet record suggests January 2012 (57) our solar system is normal Preview Submit December 2011 (50) November 2011 (56) X-ray of a cat born to be a mummy October 2011 (54) September 2011 (58) August 2011 (65) Today on New Scientist: 12 April 2012 July 2011 (67) All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please let us know, quoting the comment in question. June 2011 (62) May 2011 (76) Guidelines on farmyard Tony Marshallsay on April 13, 2012 12:13 PM antibiotics are 'make- April 2011 (76) The fact that the planets in our solar system are aligned in one plane does not necessarily imply believe' that they were formed by coalescence, rather than being simply captured "free planets". In fact, March 2011 (88) the motleyness of the collection would tend to suggest the latter. February 2011 (71) If they were previously free wanderers, they would be expected to have initial orbits in whatever January 2011 (87) plane they were captured. Once captured, they would exert gravitational pulls on each other December 2010 (77) which, under what I call the guitar string principle, would over time tend to pull them into one plane. The orientation of this equilibrium plane with respect to the solar axis would probably be November 2010 (93) determined by one or two major planets; and any tendency to move out of it would result in October 2010 (64) restoring gravitational pulls. However the arrival of any new cosmic wanderer could, of course, September 2010 (60) upset the whole applecart. August 2010 (58) July 2010 (55)

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Russell Horwood on April 13, 2012 1:46 PM April 2010 (39) The early evidence never suggested that our system was unusual. When you start looking for March 2010 (51) planets you are obviously going to start finding large planets close to their parent stars simply February 2010 (46) because they are easier to see. Anyone whom ever thought this was a fair indication of January 2010 (45) Universal systems should not be working in science, or even the media. December 2009 (47)

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