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To: SunkenCiv
As time goes on, we are going to find more and more planets revolving around more and more stars.

It seems like the number of planets and stars will continue to increase for quite some time to come. However, when we are all done counting, it will be time to start subtracting and then it will start getting scary.

9 posted on 12/05/2006 6:16:49 PM PST by SamAdams76 (12 days away from outliving Billie Holiday)
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To: SamAdams76

Extrasolar planet discoveries is one of the hot areas, where the action is. Bigger and bigger terrestrial scopes, and more and more orbiting observatories of various kinds, are a sort of arms race, perhaps analogous to the 1990s competition between different amusement parks to build the biggest roller coaster. :')

But anyway, I wholeheartedly agree -- Geoff Marcy et al have discovered more than half of all currently known extrasolar planets, and that probably won't be the case in, say, five years. Meanwhile, it will be possible to find ever-smaller planets instead of these almost-a-dwarf-star objects multiples the size of Jupiter.


10 posted on 12/05/2006 10:12:38 PM PST by SunkenCiv (I last updated my profile on Thursday, November 16, 2006 https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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