BUILDING THEORETICAL SOLAR SYSTEMS
We speak to Sean Raymond, originator of the ‘Ultimate Engineered Solar System’, about his work
How did you come to create such a strange arrangement of planets?
My day job is to understand how planetary systems form, what makes the Solar System different from exoplanet systems that we’ve discovered, and what types of orbital configurations are stable and which aren’t. I wanted to figure out what type of orbital architecture would maximise the number of planets in the habitable zone – remaining stable but without having to worry about how the system would have formed. Luckily, I could use several recent papers by scientists as inspiration. I also tested the craziest systems using computer simulations to make sure everything held together.
Why do you call it the Ultimate ‘Engineered’
Solar System?
Originally I built two systems, each with about 30 planets in the habitable zone. Those systems could plausibly form in nature if just the right series of events took place – like rolling sixes on two dice ten times in a row. But I can’t imagine how the Ultimate Engineered Solar System could form naturally. A system with equally spaced planets distributed along rings orbiting in opposite directions is just impossible as far as I know. If such a system exists, I would argue that it must have been built on purpose, presumably by the engineers of a superadvanced civilisation.
If such a system really existed, how could we detect it from Earth?
It would be pretty tricky to detect because the signals we measure to infer the presence of exoplanets – typically the radial velocity or transit signals – could end up being so confusing that they might be mistaken for noise in the case of the Ultimate Engineered Solar System.