Speaker
Description
Humanity's search for Earth analogs is enriched by the fact that Earth-like planets do not form in isolation. The interplay between Earth-like planets and their siblings is an emerging new research topic. A prevalent pattern that represents one of the most common modes of planet formation is that planets in the same system tend to have similar sizes and regular orbital spacing, like ``peas-in-a-pod.'' However, the peas-in-a-pod pattern is not a complete description of planetary systems. In our own solar system, Jupiter, which is believed to have been instrumental to the formation of Earth and the delivery of its water, represents a clear departure from peas-in-a-pod. In this talk, I show how a decade-long survey dedicated to discovering Jupiter analogs among exoplanet systems has revealed a new pattern: Jupiter-like outer planets are most prevalent around the systems of inner transiting planets that tend to have gaps, rather than regular spacing. This result suggests that Jupiter-like planets disrupt the regular spacing of small planets. The exact mechanism of disruption---whether planets that would have been in the gaps are simply inclined or suffered collisions or ejections---is an ongoing topic of study.
