There's a rather excellent article over at Nature about the great confusion that astronomers are now in regarding their theory of how your average solar system forms.
Long story short: sure, a nice simple-ish set up like in our solar system with rocky planets near the sun, and gas giants further out, lent itself well to a pretty easily understood core-accretion theory of how planets are made; but the discovery of hundreds (probably thousands) of (to use an Americanism) weird-ass solar systems with things like gas giants incredibly close to stars, and super Earths (which make up a huge 40% of exoplanets found so far) has thrown the whole field into disarray.
Mind you, the article doesn't even mention the peculiar Titus-Bode law regarding the spacing of planets in our solar system, which I have always suspected was a bit of a subtle hint from Slartibartfast* about his personal involvement.
Anyway, go read the whole article. It's a very good summary of the current state of play in exoplanet discoveries, which I must admit I have not kept up with as much as readers might have expected given my general science interests. [The problem is there have been too many announcements "oh, another "super Earth", this one only 30 light years from here. Ho hum." ]
* For those who arrived late.
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