In space there are countless constellations, suns and planets; we see only the suns because they give light; the planets remain invisible, for they are small and dark. There are also numberless earths circling around their suns.
The cosmic calendar compresses the local history of the universe into a single year. If the universe began on January 1st it was not until May that the Milky Way formed. Other planetary systems may have appeared in June, July and August, but our Sun and Earth not until mid-September. Life arose soon after. We humans appear on the cosmic calendar so recently that our recorded history occupies only the last few seconds of the last minute of December 31st.
When I grew up as a kid, we didn't know there were any other planets outside of our own solar system. It was widely speculated that planet formation was an incredibly rare event and that it's possible that other planets just don't exist in our galaxy, and it's just this special situation where we happen to have planets around our sun.
Innumerable suns exist; innumerable earths revolve around these suns in a manner similar to the way the seven planets revolve around our sun. Living beings inhabit these worlds.
Since stars appear to be suns, and suns, according to the common opinion, are bodies that serve to enlighten, warm, and sustain a system of planets, we may have an idea of the numberless globes that serve for the habitaton of living creatures.
For many centuries, humans have speculated that there might be planetary systems around other stars and that there could be extraterrestrial life there and even intelligent being. However, those were simply speculations, and now we have evidence for the first part of these ideas.
Benjamin Franklin maintained that every star is a sun, and every sun nourishes a 'chorus of worlds' just like ours.
The first exoplanet to be found around a sun-like star was discovered in 1995, just two years before I began studying exoplanet detection.
A 'serious' scientist in 1992 or 1993 had to admit the possibility that planets were really rare, that most stars might not have planets. We've gone from there to here - where most stars have planets.
The story seems to be that almost every star has a planetary system... and, also, the definition of 'habitable zone' has expanded. In our system, it used to be that only Mars and Earth were potentially habitable. Now we've got an ocean on Europa... Titan.
In future, children won't perceive the stars as mere twinkling points of light: they'll learn that each is a 'Sun', orbited by planets fully as interesting as those in our Solar system.
I think it's fantastically narcissistic to believe that in the entire universe, with all of the planetary systems that we've already discovered and the countless others that are out there, that we are the only forms of life. Now, the real question is not are there other forms of life out there, but are there other intelligent forms of life out there right now. Because the universe is not only really big but it's also really long. It's been around for a long time; it's going to be around for a long time.
Of course there are worlds. Millions of them! Every star you see has worlds, and most of those you don't see.
One of the first thoughts I had, when doing early exoplanet research, was that Earth and its many companions seemed very different from the planetary systems we were detecting.
I like the universe and nature. I am inspired a lot by the beauties of nature. I named myself as the sun because the sun is the brightest star from the incalculable stars in the universe.
The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean.
It now appears that essentially every star has a planetary system. In the very beginning, we thought at best half.
We must believe then, that as from hence we see Saturn and Jupiter; if we were in either of the Two, we should discover a great many Worlds which we perceive not; and that the Universe extends so in infinitum.
Radio astronomy reflects our fascination with how audio can be used to understand information or ideas. Just as scientists visualize data through charts and pictures, we can use 'data sonification' to translate radio signals into sound that help us better understand some of our most enigmatic planetary systems.
The bottom line is, like, one in five stars has at least one planet where life might spring up. That's a fantastically large percentage. That means in our galaxy, there's on the order of tens of billions of Earth-like worlds.
For most people, we often marvel at the beauty of a sunrise or the magnificence of a full moon, but it is impossible to fathom the magnitude of the universe that surrounds us.
We are the laws of chemistry and physics as they have played out here on Earth, and we are now learning that planets are as common as stars. Most stars, as it turns out now, will have planets.
Estimates are that at least 70 per cent of all stars are accompanied by planets, and since the latter can occur in systems rather than as individuals (think of our own solar system), the number of planets in the Milky Way galaxy is of order one trillion.
Naturally, we think that finding another Earth-like planet is identifying a site that's at least friendly here for the evolution of life. The primary goal of the Kepler mission is to statistically assess the occurrence of these small terrestrial worlds.
As our sensitivity improves, we are finally seeing planets with longer orbital periods, planetary systems that look more like our solar system.
