Science
News: The planets in our solar system are delicately
arranged, according to astronomers. If a new planet were
suddenly introduced, the additional gravitational pull would
result in collisions and orbital ejections. Now that
significant planetary systems have been discovered around other
stars, astronomers are trying to determine whether those
systems are similarly delicate. To that end, Julia Fang and
Jean-Luc Margot of UCLA created millions of simulations of
three- and four-planet solar systems, based on the arrangements
of those that have been discovered by the
Kepler
space telescope. The average spacing of the simulated
planets was very similar to that of the planets in our solar
system. When Fang and Margot then introduced a new planet to
each of the simulated systems, they found that at least
one-third of the three-planet systems and nearly one-half of
the four-planet systems became catastrophically unstable.
Although the researchers caution that
Keplerâs observations allow for some
variations in planetary arrangements, they believe that
balanced systems such as our own are common.
