![[Portrait of Dr. Songhu Wang.]](https://blogs.iu.edu/sciu/files/2021/03/Songhu-HeisingSimons-19.jpg)
Imagining life on other planets is usually the work of science-fiction authors, but increasingly it is becoming the work of current astronomers. Although it had been theorized that there existed other planets outside of our solar system, exoplanets were only confirmed in the late 1980s. The field exploded when the Kepler space telescope started finding hundreds of exoplanets. A rich field of study was born…
Tag: exoplanets
Planetary migration and the architecture of planetary systems
Planets are formed in “protoplanetary disks” composed of gas and dust orbiting a central star. Once a planet has formed in the disk, the radius of its orbit can change due to gravitational forces between the planet and material in the disk. In this way, planets can migrate from their original location, a phenomenon that… Read more »
The universe full of exoplanets
Our understanding of the formation of planetary systems has historically been based on the observations about our own Solar System. A planet is a roughly spherical object orbiting a star that has sufficiently strong gravity to clear its orbital path of other debris. The four terrestrial planets (Earth, Venus, Mercury, and Mars) of our Solar… Read more »