Discovery Of Extrasolar Planets!

Okay, so the expression ‘just beyond’ is a bit of stretch to Earthlings for which hundreds of thousands of light years constitutes quite a significant distance, not in any way a slight distance.

However, for scientists, the discoveries are absolutely fascinating and continue to drive space programs into more and more advanced technology for research.

The discovery of extrasolar planets:

Most astronomers are more than convinced that with the size of our galaxy and the number of stars that could be something like the Earth’s sun and the number of planets that could be orbiting around each of these stars is practically proof that there are other living creatures out there in this galaxy and in neighboring galaxies.

For most, the thought that there is another ‘Earth’ somewhere very far away, with people living lives similar to those of us on Earth, and that these two developed planets with developed life exist without knowledge of each other, well, that thought is simply boggling.

Most people focus on the Earth, and perhaps on the moon and maybe on another planet or two that is of interest for some reason.  While it is known that there is no other life even remotely like human life on any of these planets, the Solar System in which the Earth is found, though incredibly large on human standards, is really just a speck in the grand scheme of things.

The Solar System is just a small part of the Milky Way Galaxy, a miniscule part, really, and in addition, there are many other galaxies beyond the Milky Way.  It’s all a matter of relativity.

When viewed from the Earth, the prospect of another Earth out there somewhere is highly unlikely, but if you zoom out and look at the Earth in the grand scheme of things, everything reverses and suddenly it seems unlikely that the Earth orbiting the sun could be the only planet with life in such a vast expanse of sky.

The night sky that Earthlings look up into at night isn’t even the beginning.  For example, the Hubble Telescope, which is still currently the best technology that NASA has for this kind of searching in neighboring galaxies although a new one is soon coming, is an incredibly strong telescope.  However, this telescope can only see giant planets the size of Jupiter or bigger when looking into neighboring potential solar systems because the distance is so incredibly vast.

Even then, when the Hubble ‘sees’ a planet all the way out there the Hubble telescope is not actually spotting the planet itself, it is simply spotting a change in the brightness of the star that the planet is orbiting.  As the planet passes in front of the star, the brightness of the star changes, it dims a little, and when this is observed it is thought that a planet is passing in front of the star.

In order to confirm that it is an orbiting planet and not a passing meteoroid, astronomers continue to watch the same star in order to see if the dimming happens periodically.  When the dimming happens on a given interval, it is said that the celestial body is, indeed, a planet.

This requires a lot of stargazing and so far the Hubble has only investigated an absolutely tiny area of the sky beyond the Earth’s Solar System, again, a tiny piece of the sky in relative terms.

NASA and other astronomers around the globe are jumping to further investigation, excitedly looking for the next possible Earth.  Of course, if another Earth is ever found, at current space shuttle speeds, it will take tens or hundreds of thousands of years to reach it to make contact with whatever life inhabits it.

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