CITATION — REFERENCE ENTRY
The California-Kepler Survey. III. A Gap in the Radius Distribution of Small Planets — The Astronomical Journal
- Key
- fulton2017radiusgap
- Authors
- Fulton, Benjamin J.; Petigura, Erik A.; Howard, Andrew W.; Isaacson, Howard; Marcy, Geoffrey W.; et al.
- Issued
- 2017-9
- Type
- article-journal
- Container
- The Astronomical Journal
- Volume
- 154
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 109
Raw CSL JSON
{
"DOI": "10.3847/1538-3881/aa80eb",
"URL": "https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.10375",
"page": "109",
"type": "article-journal",
"issue": "3",
"title": "The California-Kepler Survey. III. A Gap in the Radius Distribution of Small Planets",
"author": [
{
"given": "Benjamin J.",
"family": "Fulton"
},
{
"given": "Erik A.",
"family": "Petigura"
},
{
"given": "Andrew W.",
"family": "Howard"
},
{
"given": "Howard",
"family": "Isaacson"
},
{
"given": "Geoffrey W.",
"family": "Marcy"
},
{
"literal": "et al."
}
],
"issued": {
"date-parts": [
[
2017,
9
]
]
},
"volume": "154",
"accessed": {
"date-parts": [
[
2026,
11,
5
]
]
},
"container-title": "The Astronomical Journal"
}
Claims
-
Planets intermediate in size between Earth and Neptune have no example in the Solar System, yet they are by far the most common planets in the Kepler sample.
"Our solar system has no example of these intermediate planets, yet they are by far the most common in the Kepler sample"
-
Using precise radii for 2,025 Kepler planets, the study found at least a factor-of-two shortfall of planets between 1.5 and 2.0 Earth radii, splitting close-in small planets into super-Earths (under about 1.5 Earth radii) and sub-Neptunes (about 2 to 3 Earth radii). The authors interpret these as rocky cores with differing amounts of low-density gas.
-
The large number of planets smaller than Neptune found by Kepler was unexpected given the planet-formation theories of the time, which had been developed to explain giant planets.
Available in