We know Kepler results are heavily biased for (1) systems edge-on to us (2) with big planets (3) very close to their star.
The only conclusion to draw is that planets that are all clustered close to their star tend to similar sizes. Then only Mercury is unusual. Even there, it's not unique.
Stars with planets distributed more widely, like ours, have been systematically filtered out of the results. We have no idea how common they are. It might be that they are rare, and that would make us unusual. In that case, distribution would be interesting and relative sizes would be unremarkable.
If in fact they are common, there is no reason to expect sizes in those cases to be uniform.
A system that condensed from a cloud with less intrinsic rotation seems more likely to have its planets clustered close. Less intrinsic rotation could also result in more uniformity.
> We know Kepler results are heavily biased for (1) systems edge-on to us (2) with big planets (3) very close to their star.
This article was written by an astronomer working with Kepler, and I wonder why you apparently seem to believe that they are so naive that they forget about the bias in their own research tools.
Furthermore, the article explicitly mentions this issue, and provides an explanation for why they believe it does not apply, making me wonder if you read it at all:
> I concocted (on my laptop) imaginary planetary systems in which the sizes of planets orbiting a given star were random. Could some sort of bias in Kepler’s method of finding planets—which favors the detection of large planets close to their stars—contrive to make the planets in each of my imaginary systems appear to fit the pattern? The answer was no: in more 1000 trials with randomly assigned planet sizes put through a virtual Kepler’s detection scheme, a pattern of similarly-sized planets in the same systems never emerged.
Unless you have a reason to dispute this method of verification of course, but then you should share that.
I personally see no problem: the claim is implicitly that since the measured data does not match the predictions of the model, the model is wrong. The model + known bias of Kepler is used in simulation to generate expected statistical output of measured data sets. The generated data does not match the measured data. Hence, either the model of Kepler's bias is wrong, or the model of what planetary systems to expect.
Since we based the planetary system model on our own solar system, if that model is wrong then that makes our own solar system special.
>This article was written by an astronomer working with Kepler, and I wonder why you apparently seem to believe that they are so naive that they forget about the bias in their own research tools.
Exactly. I actually did some research on Weiss.
So she studied astronomy at Harvard where she got her BS, then went on to Cambridge for her masters, and then a PhD from Berkeley. Now she works with NASA.
Odd that all these people who clearly didn't even read the article seem to find supposedly obvious bias and flaws in the research of someone who is clearly among the top young researchers/experts in this field.
The author demonstrated that a particular model is not consistent with the selected systems. That is not evidence strongly in favor of a single other model (uniform sizes = normal) it is evidence very weakly in favor of every other possible model.
I’m sure if you contacted the journal, authors and reviewers about these obvious errors they’d add your name to the list of reviewers and force this so-called scientist to reevaluate their criteria for publishing worthiness.
I was wondering, how can Kepler detect planets like Saturn that take decades to orbit, let alone planets like Uranus or Neptune? Wouldn't we need to be looking for 50 years at least in order to have enough observations to drawn meaningful conclusions?
We know Kepler results are heavily biased for (1) systems edge-on to us (2) with big planets (3) very close to their star.
The only conclusion to draw is that planets that are all clustered close to their star tend to similar sizes. Then only Mercury is unusual. Even there, it's not unique.
Stars with planets distributed more widely, like ours, have been systematically filtered out of the results. We have no idea how common they are. It might be that they are rare, and that would make us unusual. In that case, distribution would be interesting and relative sizes would be unremarkable.
If in fact they are common, there is no reason to expect sizes in those cases to be uniform.
A system that condensed from a cloud with less intrinsic rotation seems more likely to have its planets clustered close. Less intrinsic rotation could also result in more uniformity.