How do most of the newly discovered solar systems and planets compare to our own?

Question

This isn't a homework question, thank you verrrrry much.

Answer 1

  All solar systems would be similar.

  The number of planets,their size,distance from the star and their composition would differ.

Answer 2

Very similar, just missing some rocky stuff so far.

Answer 3

Most of the solar systems that we discovered have gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn.

Answer 4

I'm glad someone is just interested in astronomy and not trying to get someone to do their homework... there has been a recent increase in homework questions recently.

So, about the solar systems. It is hard to compare them because we've only observed a handful of solar systems, and a little over 300 extra-stellar planets, so its hard to make conclusions. We can make educated guesses based on what we've seen so far.

For long it has been speculated that gas giants form farther away from the local star. We came to this assumption based on the study of our own solar system. When you see that there are 4 terrestrial planets, and then 4 gas giants, you think that there is a pattern. Thats what astronomers and planetary geologists were thinking for a while. Well, it was probably just a coincidence. Well, not really a coincidence, there was a reason, but its not a fundemental law of planetary formation.... lets put it that way. Our observations of these exo-planets have come to show that gas giants can be close to the local star, too. Gas giants are really the only type of exo-planet we can see. Because they are so far away (the closest observed one is 4.3 light years away) they have to have a very great luminosity. Gas giants' atmosphere's reflect the light very well. It is because of this that so far we have only observed what appear to be gas giants. Well, thats not really fair to say. A number of these planets are probably terrestrial, but a majority of them are gas giants.

It will be long before we can really draw any conclusions based on these observations because we only get a handful of information. We are able to find out whether they are terrestrial or gas giants, and we are also able to find their chemical make-up by using a spectrometer, but that is about it. They are just so dang far away. We can't very well send a probe to one of them because even if it was traveling at light speed, it would take 4.3 years to get there. We have a hard time making it to Pluto, and thats only a couple light hours away! Imagine trying to travel 4.3 light years!

One thing we really are trying to find out is if our solar system is irregular in the respect that it has too many or too little planets for the size of the star. And that is hard to tell, because there are probably multiple small planets in these other solar systems that are just too small to observe. We just estimate it off to being 5 planets per solar system at this point to get a rough estimate on how many planets there are.

Imagine this:

There are 750,000,000,000,000,000 solar systems in the visible universe (in theory). Multiply that by 5 planets per solar system, and there are 3,750,000,000,000,000,000 planets. And we have only observed about 300. And the closest one is 4.3 light years away. Thats crazy isn't it? Now imagine how many there are in the entire universe, and not just the portion we can see from Earth.

Answer 5

Most of the solar systems we discover have gas giants that orbit very close to its parent star.  I guess this would be because of the manner in which we detect planets around stars.  Scientists can detect a star that "wobbles" because of the gravitational pull of the star and planet on each other.  The other way they have of detecting planets is when light from the star shines through the planet's atmosphere and reaches earth.  We can tell the composition of the planet's atmosphere when this happens using spectrometers.  Other than that there is not a whole lot else I can say.  Hope this helps.

Answer 6

I suggest a very interesting .avi called: The Privileged Planet  just copy & paste this or type it into google