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The journey to 6000 exoplanets began with giant planets found via the
radial-velocity method. In the three decades since, advancements have made
Earth-size planet discoveries commonplace. While much attention is being
given to ever-smaller planets, I argue that our forgotten giant friends are
due for a renaissance. To find and truly understand Earth-like planets, we
must first understand Jupiter-like planets.
Evidence from our own Solar system, alongside long-term monitoring of
Kepler and TESS systems, supports a growing consensus that cold, outer
giant planets are correlated with small, inner rocky worlds. Yet, the
exact cause of this correlation, and how the presence or absence of an
outer giant dictates the properties of inner planets, remain unknown. Key
open questions include: How do the mass, radius, and atmospheric
compositions of inner planets vary with a giant companion? And how does an
outer giant influence the orbital architecture and multiplicity of these
inner worlds?
While over 200 cold giant planets have been discovered via radial velocity,
their true masses and 3-dimensional architectures remain unconstrained due
to the limitations of the technique. Pairing radial velocities with Gaia
astrometry offers a solution to unlock these systems, already yielding new
revelations for known Jupiter analogs. I present a research program
designed to address these critical science gaps, leveraging Australian
facility access to the Magellan and Giant Magellan Telescopes. This
project, in collaboration with key international partners, promises to
deliver unprecedented new understanding of the composition, architectures,
and atmospheres of planets orbiting nearby stars using the latest
high-precision data from ground and space-based telescopes.
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