science

I'm not an Astronomer, but it's a passion of mine. This article is very misleading.

This is a well understood phenomenon, and it's very likely our solar system is a bit of an oddball.

The problem is these things are so difficult to see.

Our major methods of detecting exoplanets are looking for the planet to occlude the star (thus lowering the brightness of the star) or watching the star's movement for gravitational wobbles from being pulled on by planets.

This introduces a WELL UNDERSTOOD bias into our data. Large planets, and large planets closer to the star are just easier to detect. We have had to come up with entirely new classifications of planets for Jupiter sized planets orbiting extremely close to the Roche limit of their star, just barely far enough away to avoid being shredded or smashing into the star, a so called "hot Jupiter".

In fact, there are existing theories that there was such a gas giant in our solar system that got ejected by Jupiter as Jupiter migrated through the solar system in it's infancy, which may have also lead to the collision of Theia with Earth which created the moon and our modern planet.

In the Solar System, the inner planets (Mercury to Mars) are rocky, and the outer planets (Jupiter to Neptune) are gaseous. This pattern – rock to gas – has been consistently observed across the Milky Way until now.

They did my boy Pluto dirty with this one.

But joke aside, it's a bit strange that they present this as so unprecedented when we have Pluto, a big rock (almost planet), orbiting outside the gas giants in our own system. I would think that very little would be required for Pluto to actually be considered a planet (just a slight bit more rocks and dust for it to collect and grow off), yet they still make it sound like the idea of a rocky planet existing outside the gas-planets was basically unheard of until now.

"Up - side down"

"Boy, you turn me ..."

I wonder if it's a captured rogue planet.