Learning from hot Jupiters
The possibility of discovering a planet that is small, cool, rocky, orbiting a sunlike star and able to host life — an Earth twin, in other words — has made the search for planets outside of our solar system, or exoplanets, one of the hottest research areas in physical science. This three-part series explores MIT researchers’ roles in the quest to find an Earth twin and the effort to make sense of the 500 exoplanets that have been discovered since 1995.For some researchers, studying the exoplanets that have been discovered to date is just as critical as finding an Earth twin. Even though these planets are too hot to host life, they feature intriguing traits that the planets in our own solar system don’t. For instance, some have orbits that go in the opposite direction of the rotation of their host star. The benefit of...