Redefining Reality - The Intellectual Implications of Modern Science

The exoplanet discovered by Wolszczan and Frail would not
be hospitable to life, but the search for Earth-like exoplanets
began in earnest. Larger planets called gas giants were found,
but again, these planets would not accommodate life as we
know it.
An approach for detecting smaller exoplanets is to see them in
transit, that is, during the phase of the planet’s motion in front of
the star it orbits.
For example, there are times when we can observe the transit
of Venus across the perceived disk of our Sun. If viewed at the
right time in the right way, a black spot seems to move across
the surface of the Sun. That spot is Venus moving between
Earth and the Sun, thereby blocking the light.
With an exoplanet, the amount of light blocked would be small,
and the dark spot would be too small to see. But if we had a
sensitive enough meter to detect a decrease in the brightness of
the star, we could infer the transit of the planet.
Between the wobble and the transit methods, astronomers have
planets were rare, but the most recent estimate is that our own
Milky Way contains about 400 billion planets.
at just the right radius, what scientists call the . Right
sort and in the right range of orbit. Scientists will continue this
reality once more.
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