Aarhus Universitets segl

Not as many earthlike exoplanets after all

Some hot, rocky exoplanets are the scorched cores of former gas giants. These planets are nestled close to their stars, where stellar winds may have blown ancient atmospheres away

Close gas planets may have their gas blown away leaving a species of rocky exoplanets. Credit: ESA, Martin Kornmesser

In a recent paper published online on arXiv and due to be published in its final version in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, a group of researchers with Vincent van Eylen as lead author, and most co-authors connected to SAC, tell the story of the "Radius Valley" amongst rocky exoplanets and with new and more precise measurements explain why we may have to lower the number of prospective earthlike rocky planets.

The paper, titeled "An asteroseismic view of the radius valley: stripped cores, not born rocky" can be found here in the arXive version.

ScienceNews has an exellent overview of the results, and a somewhat shorter resume appears here from the University of Leiden, where Vincent now resides.

A resume in Danish can be found in the news column from the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus University (IFA).