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IN RETROSPECT

30 years of exoplanet detections

Nature Reviews Physics volume 4, page 290 (2022)Cite this article

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Until 30 years ago, the idea of finding planets outside our Solar System was a dream. It made sense that such exoplanets should exist — why should our Solar System be unique in the whole Universe, after all? — but actually detecting such small, far-away, objects that produce no visible light of their own posed a huge technical challenge. There had been previous suspected exoplanet discoveries, but it was in 1992 that Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail announced that they had discovered at least two exoplanets, and theirs was the first discovery to be confirmed. Over the next few years, dozens more exoplanets were discovered, until the rate of discovery really took off with the launch of NASA’s dedicated exoplanet-hunting mission, Kepler, in 2009; there are now nearly 5,000 confirmed exoplanets.

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References

Original article

  • Wolszczan, A. & Frail, D. A. A planetary system around the millisecond pulsar PSR1257 + 12. Nature 355, 145–147 (1992)

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Related article

  • Mayor, M. & Queloz, D. A Jupiter-mass companion to a solar-type star. Nature 378, 355–359 (1995)

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  • Udalski, A. et al. The Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment. Search for planetary and low-luminosity object transits in the Galactic Disk. Results of 2001 campaign — supplement. Acta Astron. 52, 115–128 (2002)

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  1. Nature Reviews Physics https://www.nature.com/natrevphys/

    Zoe Budrikis

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  1. Zoe Budrikis
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Correspondence to Zoe Budrikis.

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Budrikis, Z. 30 years of exoplanet detections. Nat Rev Phys 4, 290 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-022-00459-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-022-00459-x

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