Author Topic: Missing planets?  (Read 1768 times)

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Offline martinuzz (OP)

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Missing planets?
« on: August 24, 2010, 12:19:25 PM »
I read that sometimes, a star's first planet is missing, because it's orbit was too close to the star after generation. That makes sense.
However, I notice now, that in quite a lot of systems, there's also planet numbers missing in between.
For instance, the system I just explored, has planets I, II, IV, V, VI, VII, IX, X and XV.
That means, III, VIII, XI, XII, XIII and XIV are missing.

III and VIII can be explained, as they have asteroid belts in their place. Which also makes sense.
But what stellar mechanism made the planets between X and XV go missing?
 

Offline Erik L

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Re: Missing planets?
« Reply #1 on: August 24, 2010, 12:39:09 PM »
If the program determines that a shell is empty, the following planets do not get renumbered. As to why it leaves a shell empty, I have no idea.

Offline martinuzz (OP)

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Re: Missing planets?
« Reply #2 on: August 24, 2010, 03:17:12 PM »
Geez, I just found an extreme example of this:

The new system I discovered has it's outer planet at an orbital distance of 198b km (travel time more than 450 days at 5000km/s). The next planet is at only 5.6b km from it's star. Some asteroids outside of that planet's shell, but 'only' up to 58b km. Think this is the largest system I've seen so far.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: Missing planets?
« Reply #3 on: September 02, 2010, 07:11:54 PM »
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
If the program determines that a shell is empty, the following planets do not get renumbered. As to why it leaves a shell empty, I have no idea.
There are several reasons, including being within the roche limit, proximity to a second star in the system or a temperature too high for the planet to survive.

Steve
 

Offline Erik L

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Re: Missing planets?
« Reply #4 on: September 02, 2010, 07:21:32 PM »
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
If the program determines that a shell is empty, the following planets do not get renumbered. As to why it leaves a shell empty, I have no idea.
There are several reasons, including being within the roche limit, proximity to a second star in the system or a temperature too high for the planet to survive.

Steve

I saw a show a couple weeks back talking about planets around extrasolar systems. They posited that a planet might orbit both stars of a close binary. So we going to see that? ;)

Offline Steve Walmsley

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Re: Missing planets?
« Reply #5 on: September 02, 2010, 07:30:53 PM »
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
If the program determines that a shell is empty, the following planets do not get renumbered. As to why it leaves a shell empty, I have no idea.
There are several reasons, including being within the roche limit, proximity to a second star in the system or a temperature too high for the planet to survive.

Steve

I saw a show a couple weeks back talking about planets around extrasolar systems. They posited that a planet might orbit both stars of a close binary. So we going to see that? ;)
That happens already. You will see planets in Aurora that orbit outside both stars of a binary.

Steve