The majority of stars in our galaxy are home to planets. The most abundant are the sub-Neptunes, planets between the size of Earth and Neptune. Calculating their density poses a problem for scientists: depending on the method used to measure their mass, two populations are highlighted, the dense and the less dense.
An international team has shown the existence of two distinct populations of sub-Neptunes, resolving a debate in the scientific community Is this due to an observational bias or the physical existence of two distinct populations of sub-Neptunes? Recent work argues for the latter.
''The TTV method involves measuring variations in transit timing. Gravitational interactions between planets in the same system will slightly modify the moment at which the planets pass in front of their star,'' explains Jean-Baptiste Delisle, scientific collaborator in the Astronomy Department of the UNIGE Faculty of Science and co-author of the study.
''This selection process would lead to a bias in the literature in favor of higher masses and densities for planets characterized with the radial velocity method. As we have no measurement of their masses, the less dense planets would be excluded from our analyses,'' explains Adrien Leleu.
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