The first exoplanets
A planet is found orbiting another Sun-like star, and then thousands more.
- When
- Era
- Contemporary, Holocene
Mayor and Queloz announce 51 Pegasi b in 1995, a Jupiter-mass planet orbiting its star in four days — nothing in solar system formation theory had predicted such a thing. Kepler and TESS have since raised the confirmed count above 5,000, and the statistics indicate planets are ordinary rather than rare. The question of whether we are alone became, for the first time, a question with a research programme attached.