socialmedian: A quick tour of the galaxy's growing collection of planets

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A quick tour of the galaxy's growing collection of planets

Source: Ars Technica

Feb 18, 2009

Summary

A few years back, the first indications of extrasolar planets, detected through the small wobbles they induce in the stars they rotate, were headline news. But the headlines haven't slowed down as our collection of planets has grown past four hundred; new techniques and better theoretical understandings of planet formation have produced an accelerating pace of discovery. Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution gave a talk at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago, and he provided some perspective on how the field is evolving.

According to Boss, it's worth considering why it took us so long to get here, given that astronomy has been around for a while, but planetary discovery is only about a decade old. As he presented it, it's one of those cases where serendipity played a large role in science. The people really interested in finding planets were still trying to figure out how to detect planets in a solar system similar to ours, where the massive ones are far out and have long orbital periods. The first pl

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