[TML] Bigass Planet X

[Timothy Little]

On Fri, Nov 16, 2007 at 10:20:26AM -0800, Ken & Juliane Murphy wrote:
> Well, that started me wondeering about *real* worlds and their place
> in things. Does anyone out there have any idea whether currently
> accepted scientific theory leans toward one assumption/model over
> another? Are there more smaller worlds over larger? More belts over
> worlds in general? Even distribution?

As far as systems with a complete census of planets and belts go, we
have a sample size of 1.  All our current observation methods of other
stars are very strongly biased in favour of detecting only the
heaviest planets, particularly if they're very close to the star.

The huge "terrestrial" world discovered recently was notable mainly
not because it was so large, but because it was so small - almost as
small as Earth.  If we had to observe our system from the distances
we're discovering most of these extrasolar planets, it's unlikely that
we could even detect Jupiter.  We'd certainly have no idea whether or
not the other planets existed.


In short, in the real world all bets are off.  We don't know nearly
enough.  Even the results of theoretical modelling don't tell us very
much - there are still too many possibilities and not enough data to
narrow them down.


- Tim