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Twenty Years of Exoplanets
Oct. 16th, 2012 07:02 pmSo, there’s this news: according to reports breaking the news embargo from La Silla down in Chile, the researchers at the European Southern Observatory have found at least one planet. Not a big deal, but for the matter of location.
The planet is orbiting around Alpha Centauri B.
If you recall your astronomy 101, you’ll remember that Alpha Centauri – the whole three-star system – is about 4.3 lightyears distant from Sol. It’s the closest piece of interstellar real estate to us past the Oort Cloud or the Kuiper Belt, whichever’s further away. Some bright soul in Croatia broke the news embargo around the press conference held over the Web earlier today, and it may be a safe bet that whoever it is, they’re never going to be trusted with this kind of advance word and access again.
But this isn’t about that person. This is about my memory.
For example, I remember where I was when I first found out about those first-discovered planets orbiting some pulsar only known by a catalogue number starting with “PSR”. I was at the Algonquin College Animation labs in the old “E” block. Our head-of-program, Gerry Paquette, had just handed me a small novel’s worth of printout from the old GEnie bulletin boards. This was back in 1992.
Babylon 5 and Deep Space 9 were in a race of some sort for hearts and minds in TV space opera fandom as the two shows were gearing up to regular weekly production. I was getting ready to leave Algonquin to join the work force, as was the rest of my class. I didn’t have a clue yet whether or not I’d be taking the more tortuous path to my ambitions as opposed to the rest of the class of 1992.
Looking back, I have this realization. There is a generation alive now, today…that has never known a universe without confirmed extrasolar planets.
Think about that for a moment.
Twenty years since that discovery by Alexander Wolszczan and Dale Frail of a rock orbiting the corpse of a star over a thousand lightyears’ distant.
Twenty years and over 840 planets later, we’re on the cusp of another age of exploration.
The planet is orbiting around Alpha Centauri B.
If you recall your astronomy 101, you’ll remember that Alpha Centauri – the whole three-star system – is about 4.3 lightyears distant from Sol. It’s the closest piece of interstellar real estate to us past the Oort Cloud or the Kuiper Belt, whichever’s further away. Some bright soul in Croatia broke the news embargo around the press conference held over the Web earlier today, and it may be a safe bet that whoever it is, they’re never going to be trusted with this kind of advance word and access again.
But this isn’t about that person. This is about my memory.
For example, I remember where I was when I first found out about those first-discovered planets orbiting some pulsar only known by a catalogue number starting with “PSR”. I was at the Algonquin College Animation labs in the old “E” block. Our head-of-program, Gerry Paquette, had just handed me a small novel’s worth of printout from the old GEnie bulletin boards. This was back in 1992.
Babylon 5 and Deep Space 9 were in a race of some sort for hearts and minds in TV space opera fandom as the two shows were gearing up to regular weekly production. I was getting ready to leave Algonquin to join the work force, as was the rest of my class. I didn’t have a clue yet whether or not I’d be taking the more tortuous path to my ambitions as opposed to the rest of the class of 1992.
Looking back, I have this realization. There is a generation alive now, today…that has never known a universe without confirmed extrasolar planets.
Think about that for a moment.
Twenty years since that discovery by Alexander Wolszczan and Dale Frail of a rock orbiting the corpse of a star over a thousand lightyears’ distant.
Twenty years and over 840 planets later, we’re on the cusp of another age of exploration.
