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Matteo Cantiello edited Intro.tex
about 10 years ago
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A revolution has occurred in the last two decades in the world of astrophysics.
It all started in the mid '90s with the first discovery of new worlds around other stars. The word "Extrasolar planet" (or Exoplanet) became widely used to identify planets\footnote{A planet is a celestial body massive enough to be bounded by its self gravity (unlike a rock or an asteroid, that are kept together by electromagnetic forces), but not massive enough to produce energy through nuclear fusion (as stars do)} orbiting a star other than the Sun. I remember hearing about the discovery of
the first planet around 51 Pegasi b, a
star other than the Sun (51 Pegasi, giant planet about 50 light years
away) away, on a bus ride to school. I was blown
away, away. That night I could not sleep, my mind racing towards the amazing implications of that discovery. Little I knew that was just the
tip of the iceberg. beginning.
Different methods As today\footnote{6 February 2014, check \href{http://exoplanets.org/}{exoplanets.org} for
capturing the elusive signature of these distant worlds have been used, leading to the
discovery of thousands of exoplanets (\href{http://exoplanets.org/}{4231} between most recent figure} 765 confirmed
exoplanets and
candidate planets, as of 6 February 2014). 3466 exoplanet candidates are known. The most remarkable discoveries came only in the last couple of years thanks to the \href{http://kepler.nasa.gov/}{KEPLER} space telescope. This amazing instrument has been patiently looking for the
extremely tiny dimming induced by the passage of a planet in front of its host star, and helped to answer two fundamental questions:
\begin{enumerate}
\item How common are planets?
\item How common are planets similar to Earth?
\end{enumerate}