New Planets -Discoveries Beyond the Solar System

Before the 1990’s no one knew of a single planet orbiting a star other than our Sun. Since then the list of strange and exotic alien worlds has tallied up to around 230. As technological advancements and ultra-sensitive observatories become available, this list is expected to exponentially explode from the billions of exoplanets orbiting their stars in the universe.

In fact, new planet discoveries are becoming so common that we don’t even hear about many of them. Even some with exciting and notable features get passed by in the media hailstorm of planetary news. Some don’t even get any mention all outside of scientific circles.

"It's pretty routine now," said Alan Boss, a planet formation theorist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington. "Most planets that are found are not deemed worthy of a press release because they are sort of becoming 'one more planet.'"

All of these exosystems have been discovered by detecting the orbital motion of the star induced by its planet(s) - the planets cannot yet be seen directly because they are much fainter than their star and have too small an angular separation from it. With present technology, only giant like Jupiter and Saturn in our Solar System, can be detected - any Earth-mass planets would have too small an effect on their star's motion.

So, in case you missed any of the extraordinary extra-terrestrial news, here’s a list of 5 notable planets with a brief description and explanation of why they are newsworthy.

Epsilon Eridani b is the closest known extrasolar planet to our Earth. It orbits an orange Sun-like star only 10.5 light years away. This is close enough that astronomers believe it won’t be long before we can discover more details and take photographs using advanced telescopes.

SWEEPS-10 belongs to a new class of exoplanets called ultra-short-period planets (USPPs), which have orbits of less than a day. Sweeps-10 orbits its parent star from an incredibly close distance of around 740,000 miles. An entire year on the planet occurs every 10 hours!

Upsilon Andromeda b is tidally locked to its sun, similar to how the Moon is to Earth. One side of the planet is always facing its star. This causes the planet to be one of the most extreme surface environments astronomers have ever seen. One side of the planet is consistently hot as molten lava, while the other is always very cool, possibly below freezing.

HD 189733b was among the first planets to have its atmosphere identified. Astronomers determined that the planet is surrounded by thick clouds of silicates similar to grains of sand. While no water vapor was detected, scientists suspect it is hidden beneath the clouds.

Gliese 581 C, also called “Earth’s Twin” marked an exciting milestone in the search for alien life. It is the smallest exoplanet ever detected, and the first to lie within the habitable zone of its parent star. It is widely considered possibility that this planet could harbor alien life forms perhaps at the tribolyte level, perhaps at the level of ancient Rome, or perhaps even as far advanced machine-based intelligence.

The truly awe-inspiring concept behind all of these new planets is that we’ve barely touched the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Even more bizarrely foreign worlds and familiar earth-like planets are expected to emerge as technology develops. In our search for planets, reality may rapidly exceed our wildest dreams.

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