Article on the discovery of 51 Pegasi b, 20 years (!) ago

I recently saw this very interesting article on the discovery of the first exoplanet orbiting a (more or less) sunlike star, 51 Pegasi. 51 Peg b is also the archetype for the class of 'hot jupiters' that orbit their suns in a tight orbit. The amazing issue is that since 1996, literally thousands of exoplanets have been discovered.

user link on www.bbc.com

Interesting article.

Lots of exoplanets have been found, even some rocky (and possibly somewhat Earth-like) planets have been found, if I recall correctly. Of course, the whole Drake equation idea comes into play and the "Goldilocks zone", too.

Until we develop FTL travel, though, it seems they're all going to be too far away for humans to visit unless a migration ship were constructed that could support life for at least centuries. Even then, I haven't done the math for how long it would take at currently reachable speeds.

I don't know. It seems like there *should* be E.T. life somewhere out there but the fact we haven't found any signs of life yet leaves the whole idea in question.

"I want to believe"

On Saturday, October 29th, 2016 at 2:33 am, Helena said:

The problem is, leaving extra-terrestrial intelligence aside, we barely have the methods to detect life on exoplanets as of currently. I think, it would depend on the fortunate situation that we can actually detect a microlensing event of an exoplanet, so that we could take a look at the composition of the atmosphere. For instance, presence of atmospheric oxygen would be a potential indicator for life.

The detection of atmospheric methane would be a positive sign too, right?