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Science Quickly

You Live in a Strange Solar System

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.2639 Ratings

🗓️ 10 January 2018

⏱️ 2 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Astronomers found that other star systems tend to host similarly sized exoplanets—far different from ours. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

0:05.8

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years.

0:11.0

Yacold also partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for gut health, an investigator-led research program.

0:19.6

To learn more about Yachtolt, visit yawcp.co.j.jot.com.j, that's y-A-K-U-L-T-C-O-J-P.

0:28.4

When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacolt.

0:33.7

This is Scientific American's 60-second science. I'm Christopher in Taliatta.

0:39.0

The more astronomers study the heavens, the more they realize our solar system is weird.

0:44.4

So there are a few things that make the solar system kind of strange.

0:47.7

Lauren Weiss, an astrophysicist at the University of Montreal.

0:51.3

One of which is that we have a giant planet, only about 10% of sun-like stars,

0:57.0

have a giant planet. There are probably even fewer that have two giant planets.

1:01.8

In addition to giant Jupiter and lesser giant Saturn, we have tiny mercury, just a bit bigger

1:07.8

than the Earth's moon. So if we're weird, what does a typical solar system look like?

1:13.2

Weiss and her team trained their telescopes on 355 star systems,

1:17.5

known to host a handful of small exoplanets.

1:20.3

And they found that most of the planets within individual star systems

1:23.7

tended to be similar in size.

1:25.8

So if I'm a planet and I'm, say, two times the size of

1:30.8

Earth, my neighbor, the next planet over, is also likely to be two times the size of Earth,

1:35.9

give or take a little bit. And they were strung out at similar distances from each other, too,

1:40.8

like peas in a pod, she says. Compared to that orderly array, our system looks more like,

1:46.9

let's see, if I stick with food, I don't know, like a whole Thanksgiving dinner or something.

...

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