Word: planetsized
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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While some astronomers searched for planets, others tried to detect intelligent alien life directly. In 1960, astronomer Frank Drake started Project Ozma, an attempt to look seriously for radio signals from alien civilizations. It was the first in what became a series of experiments in seti, the Search for Extra...
The race to discover planets around sunlike stars proved similarly fruitless until about 18 months ago. At the time, Marcy and Butler were sure they had the inside track on finding them. The telescope they use, at Lick Observatory in the mountains above California's Silicon Valley, has an excellent...
Marcy didn't rest on his euphoria. He and Butler went into high gear, determined to be at least the second team to find planets around a sunlike star. They begged telescope time from their colleagues and borrowed more than $100,000 worth of computer equipment to crunch gigabytes' worth...
It is also a beginning of sorts. Faced with the existence of these planets, astronomers must now revise their theories to fit the new facts. To begin with, theorists have to scramble to explain how the 51 Pegasi planet could have formed and survived intact so close to its parent...
What the data may be saying is simply that the dividing line between stars and planets may be less distinct than astronomers had believed. "Everything found so far poses challenging questions for planetary formation theory," says astronomer Robert Stefanik, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. That was underscored last...