Exploring exoplanets — worlds orbiting alien stars — talking with Thayne Currie of NAOJ, who recently found a bizarre massive planet.
Hello everyone!
This week on The Cosmic Companion, we look at exoplanets — worlds orbiting alien stars. We are joined by Dr. Thayne Currie, astrophysicist at The Subaru Telescope, who recently discovered a planet nine times more massive than Jupiter orbiting a young star a little over 500 light years from Earth.
On 21 March 2022, NASA confirmed the 5,000th confirmed exoplanet, marking a milestone in our understanding of the Cosmos.
Three decades before, the first exoplanets were found orbiting pulsars — rapidly spinning corpses of stars, during the second week of 1992. This was the week Kristi Yamaguchi won the US female Figure Skating championship, Paul Simon opened a tour of South Africa, and President George H. W. Bush got ill at the home of the Japanese Prime Minister.
On 6 October 1995 (the day after O.J. Simpson was found innocent of murder), astronomers announced the discovery of 51 Pegasi, the first exoplanet found around a healthy, active, main-sequence star.
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Coming up next week, 3 May 2022:
Ocean Worlds of the Solar System with famed oceanographer, former NOAA chief scientist Sylvia Earle! Make sure to join us then!
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full transcript continues below
The planets of our own Solar System come in a delightful range of styles. The innermost four of these are the terrestrial planets — Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars.
Small planets like these are the hardest to find around other stars. Still, astronomers have already discovered planets smaller than our own orbiting their stellar parents. The nearest planetary system to Earth was recently found to be home to at least three planets. The most recent of these planetary finds comes in at a mass just one-quarter that of our own world.
At the other end of the scale, supermassive exoplanets like AB Aurigae b can dwarf even mighty Jupiter.
One odd class of exoplanet are super Neptunes. Just as the name suggests, these are planets similar to larger versions of Uranus or Neptune, having roughly five to seven times as much mass as Earth. These appear to be common in other solar systems, yet they do not exist (as far as we know) within our own family of planets.
Perhaps the most intriguing of all exoplanets are super Earths. These worlds are slightly larger than Earth, and some of these are found at just the right distances from their suns that liquid water — and perhaps even life — might take root on the surfaces of these worlds.
Along with the ocean worlds of our Solar System, exoplanets orbiting within the Goldilocks zone — where it is neither too cold nor too hot — might offer us our best hope to find life beyond the Earth.
In 1999, researchers spotted an exoplanet passing “in front of” its star as seen from Earth. This means of detecting worlds around other stars — the transit method — notched up its first victory.
The Kepler Spacecraft launched in March 2009. Following the loss of stabilizing gyros, the Kepler team extended the mission in 2014, using pressure from sunlight to help orient the observatory, kicking off the K2 mission.
This prolific planet-hunter discovered over 3200 exoplanets before finally falling silent in 2018. Nearly all of these Kepler discoveries were found using the transit method.
Exoplanets have been found orbiting multiple star systems, and the first exoplanet in the so-called habitable zone of its star was found in 2001.
The Spitzer Space Telescope launched in 2003, examining the atmospheres of distant worlds.
Astronomers can learn details of the atmospheres of exoplanets by examining light coming through the atmospheres of these worlds, a task first completed in 2007.
Seven years later, the first Earth-sized world within its star’s Goldilocks zone was discovered using the Kepler observatory.
We took out first look at our neighbors in 2016, with the discovery of the first of three worlds now known to orbit Proxima Centauri — the star closest to the Sun.
In February 2017, Black Sabbath played their final concert, Adele won a pair of Grammys for Hello and 25, and the search for exoplanets hit a jackpot, as NASA announced the discovery of seven intriguing exoplanets in the TRAPPIST-1 system just 40 light years from Earth.
The TESS spacecraft lifted off in April 2018, searching stars for telltale dips in brightness caused as planets pass within our line-of-sight.
In the last couple years, researchers have found not just exoplanets, but also exomoons, racing around these distant worlds.
Following monumental successes with Kepler, Spitzer, and TESS, the James Webb Space Telescope promises to unlock some of the greatest mysteries in the Universe.
By peering through the atmospheres of exoplanets, the James Webb Space Telescope could soon find the first evidence of life on other worlds.
This discovery will likely come as astronomers find atmospheres loaded with telltale markers of life. As Carl Sagan was fond of saying, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And, vigorous debate (not to mention non-sensical rantings on the internet) will be heard around the world.
However, finding life on other worlds will mark a historic milestone on our path toward becoming an interplanetary species, changing the human race forever.
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James
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