An exoplanet, or extrasolar planet, is a planet outside our solar system. More than a thousand such planets have been discovered (1074 planets in 812 planetary systems including 178 multiple planetary systems as of January 23, 2014). As of November 4, 2013, the Kepler mission space telescope has detected 3,568 candidate planets, of which about 11% may be false positives. Here is the odd thing, out of all the planets found outside our solar system, none of them safely orbit around their home star. Most orbits are radical, sending a planet sometimes out to the edge of its solar system and then racing back dangerously close to its host star causing extreme temperature variances unacceptable to hosting life as we know it. So far, our solar system is unique. No other system has been found to contain such order with a perfect habitat.
Posted on: Thu, 30 Jan 2014 13:24:57 +0000