Weird Exoplanet Orbits Could Screw Up Alien Life

astroengine writes "Life is good in the Solar System. We have Jupiter to thank for that. However, if the gas giant's orbit were a little more elliptical, there's every chance that Earth would become rather uncomfortable very quickly. Researchers looking at the zoo of exoplanets orbiting distant stars have simulated several scenarios of differing exoplanet orbits and find that many don't resemble our cozy Solar System. In fact, weird exoplanet orbits may be the deciding factor as to whether extraterrestrial life can form or not."

Comments

Save the aliens!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear friends,

The aliens of our galaxy have had a hard life. Please send donations to the buy-a-Jupiter-for-the-aliens fund. Your help is greatly appreciated.

Re:Save the aliens!

[mcgrew]

Has anyone considered that to them, we are the aliens? The link is a story about how our own solar system is uninhabited, and why.

Weird Exoplanets

[Thanshin]

"Captain. The orbit in this exoplanet is a bit weird. Summer might get be a bit warm"

"Let's surf in the beach, warm? Or Today we all stay in the fridge, warm."

"Sir, it'll be Hold your rifle with extended arms so the metal drops don't make holes in your boots, warm."

Re:Life adapts

[Thanshin]

If you lived on tropical shore where the climate was practically unchanging from day to day throughout the year, it would probably be hard to imagine life could exist in Canada.

Have you been in Canada? It's pretty hard to imagine life can exist there, wherever you're from.

I'm pretty sure they all migrated to some warmer place as soon as I left the country, only to return and scare the next tourists with stories about actually living there.

Um yeah.

[DaveV1.0]

Of course, the fact that we are finding these weird systems may simply be because they are the easiest to detect and all the stars with planetary systems like ours are thought to not have planets because we can't detect the planets using current methods and data.

Remember, Jupiter orbits the sun once every 12 years. So, if we were trying to detect our own solar system at 10 light years, how long would it take to detect Jupiter's effect on Sol's position?

Re:Um yeah.

[confused one]

You've hit the nail on the head. We're seeing these systems because either the gas giant is so close to the star that it obviously occludes the light and affects the radial acceleration of the star, or because their orbit extends far enough out from the star that it intersects with and modifies the surrounding debris cloud (think Oort).

Kepler and COROT are starting to return results. They'll need a decade or two to identify Jupiters and Kepler will need 4 or 5 years to identify an Earth or Mars.

Re:"Weird"?

[wiredlogic]

If anything, all of this could be mean that our system is quite weird; at least on average.

Possibly, but not likely. Our current planet detection methods are skewed toward finding the oddballs with high mass and highly elliptical low orbital periods. They induce the most wobble and occlude the most light from their stars. As such, they are the easiest to find over short observation periods.