The robustness of planet formation

摘要

On a clear night, a person admiring the heavens may see a few thousand stars. The stars are more or less randomly distributed, although some are gathered in groups known as open clusters, the most famous being the Pleiades (Fig. 1). Stars, and presumably their planets, are born in such clusters. But despite considerable effort, evidence for planets in clusters is frustrat-ingly scarce: of more than 850 planets that are currently known, only four reside in clusters. And whereas more than 10,000 stars in open clusters have been examined, before the study by Meibom et al.