The New Worlds: Extrasolar Planets

Springer Praxis Books: Popular Astronomy

by Fabienne Casoli, Thérèse Encrenaz

The detection and exploration of extrasolar planets is one of the most exciting and fast moving areas of astronomical research at the present time. With over forty research programmes ongoing, and just as many planned, the search for these new worlds has become the main objective for a new generation of giant ground-based telescopes as well as many future space missions. Experimental methods and observational techniques are pushing existing instruments to their limits. The most exciting possibility offered by this research is the discovery of Earth-like extrasolar planets, with a mass comparable to that of Earth, located at the right distance from its star to host liquid water in other words, a place where life could evolve.

The authors tackle this challenging field of research by first looking at early searches for extrasolar planets, the very first discoveries and the observational techniques involved. They then examine the very wide range of extrasolar planets that have been discovered during the past ten years and look at what we can learn about such planets by studying the bodies in our own solar system. The formation of planetary systems, the way in which such systems may evolve and the final systems of planets that result are then discussed. Finally Drs Casoli and Encrenaz examine the possibilities for life on extrasolar planets, again using our own solar system as a model, and look to the plans for future extrasolar planet searches. A number of Appendices summarise the extrasolar planet discoveries to date.

Genres: Astronomy

200 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Yael · Rating 5 out of 5]

The New Worlds showcases what we have learned so far about extrasolar planets and the intriguing implications coming from our discoveries about them. The first such world was found in 1995. Now, just 15 years later, nearly 400 more have been found and catalogued.

Many of these worlds, planetary giants far larger than Jupiter, lie close to their parent stars, some 10 to 50 times closer than Jupiter is to Sol, and their orbits are strongly elliptical, whereas those of the solar planets are nearly circular. Does this mean that our Solar System is an exception to the rule? Or are we finding such giant worlds as a result of our still-young methods of detecting them, and will improvements in our search for extrasolar worlds finally yield up small rocky worlds in the life zones of their stars and larger worlds at more or less the same distances from their stars that Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are from the Sun?

In fact, there have been discoveries hinting at Earthlike extrasolar planets, comparable in mass to our world, at just the right distances from their stars to allow the presence of liquid water on their surfaces, places where life may have evolved, or could evolved. Other discoveries suggest that the gigantic ultra-hot worlds so close to their stars that have been found in the last 15 years are of generations of planets birthed in young stellar systems that will eventually be replaced by planetary systems more like that of Sol's. Planets attendant on pulsars, the fast-rotating corpses of collapsed giant stars with electromagnetic fields so strong that no living things could persist long in their presence, tell us something about capture of worlds by stars or their revenants. And there are planets orbiting stars that are almost as old as the universe itself.

This beautiful book, which presents its information so that the layman without any scientific knowledge can easily understand it, presents the story of the search for planets outside the Solar System through 2004; describes the various techniques used by astronomers to detect extrasolar planets; examines the broad range of extrasolar planets discovered through 2004; and illustrates its findings with a host of easily-understood diagrams and gorgeous photographs. This is the perfect gift for anyone who is interested in astronomy as well as parents whose children want to know about our universe and the way physical reality works.