M
mrmorris
Guest
In the SDC article, it's stated that 5 out of 5 scientists agree that our solar system is 'special' <b>because</b> all of the planets found to date indicate solar systems incredibly different than ours (namely a preponderance of huge planets very close to their sun or huge planets with highly elliptical orbits).<br /><br />It's hard for me to believe that presumably trained minds could even consider making such an assumption. The two methods used to locate extra-solar planets (The Spitzer method wasn't used to 'find' a planet, so it doesn't count... yet) <b>would not find</b> a solar system like ours. Even if I were to include Spitzer -- it wouldn't work either without a huge planet close to the Sun.<br /><br />- So we've found 150ish planets in solar systems completely unlike our own. <br />- The methods being used wouldn't *find* a solar system like ours. <br />- The 'unusual' solar systems almost assuredly make up less than 1% of the total number in the sphere of space around our solar system that would contain them.<br /><br />The upshot is that they can't use the specs of currently located planets to make *any* statistical statements because their data is completely skewed towards the conclusion they're proposing. This would be like using only residents in Beverly Hills to make a study about the average annual income for residents of the entitre planet, and concluding from the results that the average household income worldwide was $10,000,000.