From a young age we are taught the names and placements of the planets within our own solar system, but very infrequently taught about planets outside of it. Exoplanets are planets the orbit stars outside of our solar system. For thousands of years such planets were unfathomable because of the lack of technology needed to see them. And within the scientific community, seeing is believing.
“People ask what will happen if Mars One fails. There will be Mars Two, Mars Three, there will be Gliese 581 One, Proxima Centauri b One etc,” said playwright Mehmet Murat Ildan.
“If a project opens the path for other projects, it means that it has already triumphed!”
It was not until the 1990s that exoplanets were discovered. In 1992 a pulsar, which is a rapidly spinning corpse of a star that died as a supernova, named PSR 1257+12 was discovered. Although not an exoplanet, PSR 1257+12 sparked the momentum for scientists to do more research in the field. By 1995 the first exoplanet was confirmed, it was a Jupiter-mass-like planet 20 times closer to its sun-like star than the Earth is to its sun. The planet was deemed 51 Pegasi b.
With the help of the Kepler Spacecraft that was launched in March of 2009, many other exoplanets have been discovered. According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) there are 3,431 confirmed exoplanets, an additional 4,696 possible exoplanets yet to be confirmed, and a total of 2,562 solar systems. Scientist are also researching what exoplanets may be habitual for human beings. Such planets are usually the same or similar distance from their sun as Earth is from ours.
“This is the big question we all have: are we alone in the universe? And exoplanets confirm the suspicions that planets are not rare,” said astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, and science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson.
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