Strange New Worlds
Posted by Vikas Acharya on December 1, 2016Article Source: rationalisingtheuniverse.org
Exoplanet – a planet which orbits a star outside the solar system
Prior to 1992 not a single exoplanet was known to exist. Now, here we sit 24 years later having discovered 3,537 exoplanets in 2,653 planetary systems. The field of exoplanetary science has without a doubt been the booming area of astronomy in the last decade. So it’s only right Rationalising the Universe respects this big thinking field of science and we go on a little whistle-stop tour through the history of exoplanet exploration, explain how detections are made and discover just how strange some of these new worlds are. This is a topic which has a special place in my heart (brain) as when i’m not typing away furiously on this site I work for a UK Space Mission which will, come 2019, launch a satellite into low-earth orbit to look at exoplanets which have already been discovered in…
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