• Question: is it very easy to build planets?

    Asked by Johnster to Stefan on 11 Nov 2014. This question was also asked by elisha pepper.
    • Photo: Stefan Lines

      Stefan Lines answered on 10 Nov 2014:

      Making planets using computer simulations is surprisingly easy (and probably explains why we have discovered so many). However, building planets under certain conditions (binary stars) is difficult. An even bigger difficulty is trying to replicate the specific types of planets we observe using telescopes. For example, how do we explain the multi-planet Kepler-62 system?

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler-62

      It’s difficult to cram that many massive planets so close to each other!

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