Bibcode
Delgado-Mena, E.; Israelian, G.; González-Hernández, J. I.; Bond, J. C.; Santos, N. C.; Udry, S.; Mayor, M.
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 725, Issue 2, pp. 2349-2358 (2010).
Advertised on:
12
2010
Journal
Citations
145
Refereed citations
132
Description
Theoretical studies suggest that C/O and Mg/Si are the most important
elemental ratios in determining the mineralogy of terrestrial planets.
The C/O ratio controls the distribution of Si among carbide and oxide
species, while Mg/Si gives information about the silicate mineralogy. We
present a detailed and uniform study of C, O, Mg, and Si abundances for
61 stars with detected planets and 270 stars without detected planets
from the homogeneous high-quality unbiased HARPS GTO sample, together
with 39 more planet-host stars from other surveys. We determine these
important mineralogical ratios and investigate the nature of the
possible terrestrial planets that could have formed in those planetary
systems. We find mineralogical ratios quite different from those of the
Sun, showing that there is a wide variety of planetary systems which are
not similar to our solar system. Many planetary host stars present an
Mg/Si value lower than 1, so their planets will have a high Si content
to form species such as MgSiO3. This type of composition can
have important implications for planetary processes such as plate
tectonics, atmospheric composition, or volcanism.
Related projects
Observational Tests of the Processes of Nucleosynthesis in the Universe
Several spectroscopic analyses of stars with planets have recently been carried out. One of the most remarkable results is that planet-harbouring stars are on average more metal-rich than solar-type disc stars. Two main explanations have been suggested to link this metallicity excess with the presence of planets. The first of these, the “self
Garik
Israelian