Carole sends me an article from the National Geographic Daily News site that reports that the count of extra-solar planets has soared past one thousand!
From the NG article:
- After just two decades of hunting, this symbolic milestone was surpassed with this week's announcement of the discovery of 11 new worlds by the British Wide Angle Search for Planets detection program.
This of course does not take into account planets that have as yet not been confirmed, which may count in the thousands and of course the billions that must exist in the Milky Way already.
Detection of extra-solar planets has soared due to indirect detection methods. Methods now count on how a distant star may flicker as a planet passes in front of it, or the more common wobble a star may have as planets influence their orbit.
Check out the article here for more info
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