Quotes About Exoplanets

The modelers are starting to map out the possible climate states of exoplanets. I've participated in some workshops about this and have found it fascinating watching astronomers and terrestrial climate modelers try to talk to one another. There is a huge gulf in scale and perspective. Our knowledge of exoplanets is so sparse. Each of these worlds is known to us as, at best, a few numbers: mass, distance from a star, and in some cases vague inferences about temperature

By monitoring auroral activity on exoplanets, we may be able to infer the presence of water on or within an exoplanet.

Ultimately, what we're looking for in the long run is to find other Earth-like planets.

Generally speaking, exoplanets can be any size, and they are found in a wide range of orbits. Some have massive gas atmospheres; others are smaller with an icy or rocky composition.

Super-Earths are how we call a family of planets... up to two times larger and about ten times more massive than the Earth.

The usual metric for whether a planet is habitable or not is to ascertain whether liquid water could exist on its surface. Most worlds will either be too cold, too hot or of a type (like Jupiter) that may have no solid surface and be swaddled in noxious gases.

In 1999, my team discovered that the star Upsilon Andromedae was circled by three gas-giant planets - the first distant multiplanet system ever found. That same year, other researchers observed the first 'transit' of an exoplanet - a planet blocking out a small fraction of the starlight as it passes in front of the star.

We're going to find Marses and maybe Earths out in the solar system's attic of the Oort Cloud and the Kuiper Belt.