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The New Worlds

Extrasolar Planets

  • Book
  • Apr 2007

Overview

Authors:
  1. Fabienne Casoli

    1. Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale (Orsay) CNRS and Université Paris-Sud 11, Orsay, France

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  2. Thérèse Encrenaz

    1. Laboratoire d’etudes spatiales et d’instrumentation en astrophysique (LESIA), Observatoire de Paris, Meudon, France

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  • Presents the whole story of the hunt for planets outside the Solar System for the first time
  • Describes clearly the various techniques used by astronomers to detect extrasolar planets
  • Provides a complete picture of the wide range of extrasolar planets discovered to date
  • Demonstrates how life might evolve on an extrasolar planet and how such life might be detected
  • Explains concepts in such a way that no prior understanding of science is needed

Part of the book series: Springer Praxis Books (PRAXIS)

Part of the book sub series: Popular Astronomy (POPULAR)

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Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xi
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  2. Extrasolar planets: the Holy Grail of astronomers

    Pages 1-11

  3. In search of exoplanets

    Pages 13-36

  4. Twelve years of discovery

    Pages 39-63

  5. What do we learn from our own solar system?

    Pages 65-88

  6. The formation of planetary systems

    Pages 91-118

  7. Life in the Universe

    Pages 121-149

  8. Future projects

    Pages 151-165

  9. Back Matter

    Pages 167-188
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Keywords

About this book

Exoplanet, extrasolar planet, exoEarth, exojupiter: neologisms still absent from many dictionaries. These terms are, however, current among astronomers, and are heard in their answers to a question already two millennia old: are there planets like ours elsewhere in the Universe? Greek atomists such as Epicurus were convinced of the existence of an infinite number of solar systems like our own, but it was only in 1995 that a real answer began to emerge. An extrasolar planet had been detected... a planet orbiting another star... a star like the Sun. So, the solar system was not unique! By mid- 2006 more than 200 giant exoplanets had been discovered. At this rate of discovery it seems that Earth-like planets may be found within a decade. The discovery of exoplanets held some surprises, in that they exhibited very different characteristics from what might have been expected. Although most of them are gas giants of masses comparable to Jupiter's mass, as a result of the rather insensitive nature of current detection methods, why are they from ten to fifty times closer to their stars than is Jupiter? How were these 'hot Jupiters' formed? Another surprise about exoplanets is that many of them have very elliptical orbits, while the planets of the solar system have much more circular orbits.

Reviews

From the reviews:

"The story … told in this translation of a French book in vivid language and with plenty of colour illustrations, with careful, explanations of terms to make the account accessible to non-specialists. … this book is a great introduction to the exciting topic of planetary systems beyond our own." (Fred Taylor, BBC Sky at Night, August, 2007)

"New Worlds discusses theories of planetary system formation – what our own solar system tells us, and how that has been changed by the new systems being found today. … New Worlds asks questions about life in the universe – how we define it, how to search for it, and where we might find it in other star systems. … The book is recommended for astronomy and general science collections." (David White, ACADEMIA, December, 2007)

Authors and Affiliations

  • Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale (Orsay) CNRS and Université Paris-Sud 11, Orsay, France

    Fabienne Casoli

  • Laboratoire d’etudes spatiales et d’instrumentation en astrophysique (LESIA), Observatoire de Paris, Meudon, France

    Thérèse Encrenaz

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