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Register a new userA population of planetary systems characterized by short-period, Earth-sized planets
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We analyze data from the Quarter 1-17 Data Release 24 (Q1--Q17 DR24) planet candidate catalog from NASAs Kepler mission, specifically comparing systems with single transiting planets to systems with multiple transiting planets, and identify a distinct population of exoplanets with a necessarily distinct system architecture. Such an architecture likely indicates a different branch in their evolutionary past relative to the typical Kepler system. The key feature of these planetary systems is an isolated, Earth-sized planet with a roughly one-day orbital period. We estimate that at least 24 of the 144 systems we examined (>~17%) are members of this population. Accounting for detection efficiency, such planetary systems occur with a frequency similar to the hot Jupiters.
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Since the discovery of the first extrasolar giant planets around Sun-like stars, evolving observational capabilities have brought us closer to the detection of true Earth analogues. The size of an exoplanet can be determined when it periodically passes in front of (transits) its parent star, causing a decrease in starlight proportional to its radius. The smallest exoplanet hitherto discovered has a radius 1.42 times that of the Earths radius (R Earth), and hence has 2.9 times its volume. Here we report the discovery of two planets, one Earth-sized (1.03R Earth) and the other smaller than the Earth (0.87R Earth), orbiting the star Kepler-20, which is already known to host three other, larger, transiting planets. The gravitational pull of the new planets on the parent star is too small to measure with current instrumentation. We apply a statistical method to show that the likelihood of the planetary interpretation of the transit signals is more than three orders of magnitude larger than that of the alternative hypothesis that the signals result from an eclipsing binary star. Theoretical considerations imply that these planets are rocky, with a composition of iron and silicate. The outer planet could have developed a thick water vapour atmosphere.
We perform a search for dormant comets, asteroidal objects of cometary origin, in the near-Earth asteroid (NEA) population based on dynamical and physical considerations. Our study is based on albedos derived within the ExploreNEOs program and is extended by adding data from NEOWISE and the Akari asteroid catalog. We use a statistical approach to identify asteroids on orbits that resemble those of short-period near-Earth comets using the Tisserand parameter with respect to Jupiter, the aphelion distance, and the minimum orbital intersection distance with respect to Jupiter. From the sample of NEAs on comet-like orbits, we select those with a geometric albedo $p_V leq 0.064$ as dormant comet candidates, and find that only $sim$50% of NEAs on comet-like orbits also have comet-like albedos. We identify a total of 23 NEAs from our sample that are likely to be dormant short-period near-Earth comets and, based on a de-biasing procedure applied to the cryogenic NEOWISE survey, estimate both magnitude-limited and size-limited fractions of the NEA population that are dormant short-period comets. We find that 0.3-3.3% of the NEA population with $H leq 21$, and $9^{+2}_{-5}$% of the population with diameters $d geq 1$ km, are dormant short-period near-Earth comets.
We perform numerical simulations to study the Habitable zones (HZs) and dynamical structure for Earth-mass planets in multiple planetary systems. For example, in the HD 69830 system, we extensively explore the planetary configuration of three Neptune-mass companions with one massive terrestrial planet residing in 0.07 AU $leq a leq$ 1.20 AU, to examine the asteroid structure in this system. We underline that there are stable zones of at least $10^5$ yr for low-mass terrestrial planets locating between 0.3 and 0.5 AU, and 0.8 and 1.2 AU with final eccentricities of $e < 0.20$. Moreover, we also find that the accumulation or depletion of the asteroid belt are also shaped by orbital resonances of the outer planets, for example, the asteroidal gaps at 2:1 and 3:2 mean motion resonances (MMRs) with Planet C, and 5:2 and 1:2 MMRs with Planet D. In a dynamical sense, the proper candidate regions for the existence of the potential terrestrial planets or HZs are 0.35 AU $< a < $ 0.50 AU, and 0.80 AU $< a < $ 1.00 AU for relatively low eccentricities, which makes sense to have the possible asteroidal structure in this system.
We present two new planetary systems found around cool dwarf stars with data from the K2 mission. The first system was found in K2-239 (EPIC 248545986), char- acterized in this work as M3.0V and observed in the 14th campaign of K2. It consists of three Earth-size transiting planets with radii of 1.1, 1.0 and 1.1 R Earth, showing a compact configuration with orbital periods of 5.24, 7.78 and 10.1 days, close to 2:3:4 resonance. The second was found in K2-240 (EPIC 249801827), characterized in this work as M0.5V and observed in the 15th campaign. It consists of two transiting super-Earths with radii 2.0 and 1.8 R Earth and orbital periods of 6.03 and 20.5 days. The equilibrium temperatures of the atmospheres of these planets are estimated to be in the range of 380-600 K and the amplitudes of signals in transmission spectroscopy are estimated at ~10 ppm.
We investigated the dynamical stability of high-multiplicity Kepler and K2 planetary systems. Our numerical simulations find instabilities in $sim20%$ of the cases on a wide range of timescales (up to $5times10^9$ orbits) and over an unexpectedly wide range of initial dynamical spacings. To identify the triggers of long-term instability in multi-planet systems, we investigated in detail the five-planet Kepler-102 system. Despite having several near-resonant period ratios, we find that mean motion resonances are unlikely to directly cause instability for plausible planet masses in this system. Instead, we find strong evidence that slow inward transfer of angular momentum deficit (AMD) via secular chaos excites the eccentricity of the innermost planet, Kepler-102 b, eventually leading to planet-planet collisions in $sim80%$ of Kepler-102 simulations. Kepler-102 b likely has a mass $>sim0.1M_{oplus}$, hence a bulk density exceeding about half Earths, in order to avoid dynamical instability. To investigate the role of secular chaos in our wider set of simulations, we characterize each planetary systems AMD evolution with a spectral fraction calculated from the power spectrum of short integrations ($sim5times10^6$ orbits). We find that small spectral fractions ($lesssim0.01$) are strongly associated with dynamical stability on long timescales ($5times10^9$ orbits) and that the median time to instability decreases with increasing spectral fraction. Our results support the hypothesis that secular chaos is the driver of instabilities in many non-resonant multi-planet systems, and also demonstrate that the spectral analysis method is an efficient numerical tool to diagnose long term (in)stability of multi-planet systems from short simulations.
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