Extra Solar Planets

Extra Solar Planets

Earths Beyond Earth: The Search for Other Worlds In early 1990, the first
extrasolar planet was detected, surprising everyone by its strangeness. More
planets have now been discovered outside our solar system than in it. These
planets present many great mysteries to the astronomical world. Extrasolar
planets are planets that exist outside our solar system; they are orbiting a
star other than our Sun. So far, eighteen have been found, all of them defying
well-established theories about planets and how they operate (Winters, 46). As

Stephen Maran said, "The new discoveries remind us that ignorance is not just
bliss, it is also a lack of imagination. The newfound planets show us not only
that a solar system is not a rare commodity, but that ours may be plain
vanilla." (73) Finding extrasolar planets is both difficult and complicated.

The average star, for instance, is one hundred million times brighter than any
planet orbiting it (De Grasse Tyson, 87). "Picking out a planet against the
glare of a star is like trying to spot a 100-watt light bulb next to a

100-billion-watt searchlight," says Michael Lemonick (54). Also, earth-size
planets are too small to have any significant effect on their star, so they are
almost impossible to detect (De Grasse Tyson, 88). There is, however , a way to
find extrasolar planets without using direct sight: the Doppler Effect. When a
star has a planet in its gravitational field, it makes the star appear as if it
is "wobblin...

Extra Solar Planets

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