Exoplanets: The Hunt for Seven New Worlds

For centuries, we wondered if we were alone. In October 1995, we found the first planet orbiting a star like our own Sun. Swiss astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz announced their discovery after detecting a tiny, rhythmic wobble in the star’s light, the tell-tale gravitational tug of an unseen world. The planet, named 51 Pegasi b, was a gas giant roughly half the mass of Jupiter, though it was physically larger because of its intense heat. It stunned scientists by orbiting its star in just over four days, where surface temperatures reach a blistering 1,000 degrees Celsius. This was no Earth, but its discovery proved that other stars like the Sun could host their own planetary systems. The hunt for other worlds had officially begun.