Dune. Star Wars. Alien. Science fiction movies love alien worlds, and so do we. But how do scientists find planets outside our solar system in real life? One way is by looking for the stars that wiggle. Historically, astronomers have measured those wiggles via the Doppler method, carefully analyzing how the star's light shifts. Thanks to new data from the GAIA telescope, scientists have a much better picture of distant stars' wiggles — and the exoplanets that cause them.Want to hear more about exoplanet discoveries? Send us an email at [email protected]. Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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Growing up, you might have learned the names of the planets. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter. But what about Beta Pictoris C? You probably didn't learn that one. I didn't either. That's because we only found out about it in 2019. And because it's an extrasolar planet, or an exoplanet.
Well, an exoplanet is a planet, but it doesn't orbit the sun. It orbits some other star in the galaxy.
That's Josh Wynn. He's an astronomer at Princeton University and an exoplanet hunter.
And the study of exoplanets is one of the newest and most exciting areas of astronomy. It really only got going in the mid-1990s.
Scientists have found thousands of exoplanets since then by relying on a little trick of gravity.
When a planet is orbiting a star, it's because the star's gravity is pulling on the planet. But forces come in pairs. If the star is pulling on the planet, the planet has to be pulling on the star with the same force.
Compared to the planet, the star is massive, so the pull of gravity from the planet doesn't make it move much.
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