The Solar System as an Exoplanetary System

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-2-2015

Publication Title

The Astrophysical Journal

Volume

810

Issue

2

First page number:

105

Abstract

With the availability of considerably more data, we revisit the question of how special our solar system is compared to observed exoplanetary systems. To this goal, we employ a mathematical transformation that allows for a meaningful, statistical comparison. We find that the masses and densities of the giant planets in our solar system are very typical, as is the age of the solar system. While the orbital location of Jupiter is something of an outlier, this is most likely due to strong selection effects toward short-period planets. The eccentricities of the planets in our solar system are relatively small compared to those in observed exosolar systems, but are still consistent with the expectations for an 8-planet system (and could, in addition, reflect a selection bias toward high-eccentricity planets). The two characteristics of the solar system that we find to be most special are the lack of super-Earths with orbital periods of days to months and the general lack of planets inside of the orbital radius of Mercury. Overall, we conclude that, in terms of its broad characteristics, our solar system is not expected to be extremely rare, allowing for a level of optimism in the search for extrasolar life.

Disciplines

Astrophysics and Astronomy

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