the famous Italian monkey Donna Bruno
and 1586 published a book in which he
said the Sun is a star and that the
earth was a planet and that other stars
certainly had planetary systems and
probably even had life then for that and
other radical things that he said the X
urge burned him publicly you could say
that extrasolar planets was a much
hotter field back then exoplanets were
almost as silly as looking for
extraterrestrials you know little green
men on other planets seriously looking
for planet was a kind of weird topic the
whole field had sort of a snake oil
sheen about it because over the previous
50 years or so there's been many many
claims of the first extrasolar planet
ever and the one thing all those claims
had in common was that they were wrong
Oh
in San Francisco California
astronomers Geoff Marcy and Paul Butler
were quietly looking for Doppler ships
changes in the observed color of light
from the star I literally spent the
first eight years of the program simply
trying to improve the techniques
involved in making these sort of
measurements mostly totally under the
radar nobody knew what we were doing and
nobody cared a ray of hope that it might
be possible to detect a planet came with
the discovery by Dave Latham and FEMA's
a of a mysterious object orbiting the
star HD 101-80 less and times the mass
of Jupiter they would have seen it to
this day it is not known whether this
object is a planet a brown dwarf or even
a low mass star but its discovery
emboldened to others to continue the
search a different and dangerous
approach to planet hunting was underway
in Canada the team of Gordon Walker and
Bruce Campbell employed the deadly gas
hydrogen fluoride in an attempt to
precisely measure Doppler shifts and he
showed me their setup in Canada at one
point one person would be in there doing
the setup and the other person would
have been outside of the room looking
through a porthole with two gas masks
and his job was if something went wrong
drawn a gas mask run the room throw the
gas mask on the other guy and drag him
the hell out any good science should
have an element of danger there should
always be at least the vague hint of
death involved otherwise you're not
really on the cutting edge
they really pioneered the whole field
just a spectacular achievement we're all
here because of the work that they did
in 1992 another incredible discovery
piqued the interests of astronomers
looking for exoplanets but these new
exoplanets were not orbiting a regular
star they were orbiting a pulsar two
very small bodies got detected at
Arecibo by Wilson and his colleagues and
they really got us scratching our heads
so we call them pulsar planets bullshit
and frailes somewhat of a special case
because I don't think anyone really
doubted that these were planets as much
at the time but they were planets around
a bizarre object a pulsar but they
really were the first two bodies to
orbit a dead star not a currently
shining star the formation of planets is
an incredibly robust process and that's
what that discovery told us and we
missed it because we we didn't
understand it we should have understood
that planets don't come in ones that
they come in systems but we were still
focused on finding the very first planet
halfway around the world in Geneva a
pair of Swiss astronomers were hard at
work developing a different technique
their instrument relied on fiber-optic
technology and they used it to turn
their eyes on exoplanets I first day of
work I got this this booklet from Michel
that was the ultimate knowledge of data
processing of spectroscopy that was
almost nothing at that time and and
that's it and we had to do this this
instrument and we designed this
practically without much support from
anybody else because the other people
felt that this was not interesting after
few months already at the end of 94 we
got a signal of viability for several
stars not only one several stars we
realized very rapidly that instrument to
be far more precise at without so I
started with a couple of star bit more
intensively and 50 watt Bank was under
them because it was bright and and very
rapidly 51 peg had a very weird behavior
on what side we were absolutely sure of
the quality of our measurement all the
signal was in favor of a planet but it's
evident it was a so unusual planet and
really felt at that time oh there is
something really bad in the software on
the instruments and I better to figure
out because otherwise my PhD would be
compromised over the next several months
the two astronomers checked and
rechecked their data the problem was no
one could imagine a giant planet with
such a short orbit so we came back in
July this time together with Michel very
excited say ok lo let's see whether the
conclusion that we had with the first
bunch of data we had still holds the
real moment where we we had the
confirmation of the reality of 51 peg it
was really a planet was in July 25 first
data just on it with okay just look
so go second data still on the curve you
say okay well two is father 62 it's not
enough the third one was still on it
following a track I mean and and then we
said well let's just wait the fourth to
be really really sure because he was so
so so embarrassing conclusion that
planet that we really want to make sure
that well I was will we got the good
period the good amplitude and so on so
at the time was really the time for the
celebration before we were not sure that
it was a planet
I mean think is a real planet believe it
or not is it does
there's no theory to predict that planet
but there's a planet here following days
of rumors circling the globe at a
conference in Florence Italy the news
unofficially leaked a jupiter-sized
planet had been discovered this massive
planet was making a complete orbit of
its star in only four days how could
that be suddenly this is 51 peg which is
a jupiter-sized planet but in a four day
orbit and people knew that was
impossible jupiter-like planets orbit it
like Jupiter and Saturn orbital
distances back in San Francisco Marcy
and Butler by mere coincidence had four
consecutive days of reserved telescope
time at the Lick Observatory the exact
amount of time needed to confirm or
debunk the claim
we get the star very hard for those four
nights we reduced the data as quickly as
we can we were blown away we saw exactly
the signal the mayor and Chlo had
announced confirming my data to me it
was just just the best gift I could have
had because I said off fine so all the
work I did is right here in San
Francisco the discovery was dramatically
verified just this past weekend October
19 1995 what may be the discovery of new
planets outside our solar system has
created enormous excitement among
astronomers the confirmation was made
before the official announcement of the
discovery itself it went completely out
of control
everybody was discussing of this new
object except us
by tradition scientists have their
discoveries peer reviewed by other
scientists for accuracy I was one of the
referees on the paper there were three
referees and normally I think they only
do two but this was so big that the
nature editor Leslie sage is being very
careful because of the situation's
nature was very strict I say well the
guys if you talk to people then then
we're not going to publish your paper so
it's only after one months or something
like this says I receive a message from
nature that okay no you you are relaxed
from say embargo because the discovery
was just too big just far too big to
follow the usual scheme that is required
for a scientific paper as soon as you
start talking about that I mean
everybody wanted to know about this
the to untag be is a real planet no
question about that
as soon as we detected hist one peg he
had on his date are plenty of something
like that
it just need to look at it this point we
hadn't analyzed all our data we had two
computers and it would have literally
have taken us five or six years to get
through all of the data so literally
about a half a dozen different groups
and you know we've just received these
new computers and we're not going to use
them for the next several months you
want to dump your jobs on it within two
months to other Jupiter's circling
around their stars were found by Marcy
and Butler and the floodgates of planet
hunting were now wide open
you know from no planets at all to the
point we were discovering a new planet
every month or even sometimes every week
and almost all of the planetary systems
that we found were very different from
the solar system weren't even similar at
in the least bit remember asking at a
meeting you know how long do you think
this will go on and I think Michelle may
or said huh maybe you know another five
or ten years and and then the game is
over fortunately the game just got a lot
more exciting
after getting my PhD I became aware of
this fellow at NASA Ames Research Center
bill Baruch II I would see him at all
these meetings they were very small
meetings back in the day and like he'd
literally be by himself out having
dinner so we would join him and chat
about things and he was very persistent
bill walked around the halls and
whenever the Ames managers saw him
coming they turned and walked the other
way bill Baruch II wrote a paper in the
1980s that described the transit method
when that planet passes in front of the
star the Starlight drops by a tiny tiny
amount and by measuring the brightness
of the star minute-by-minute we can
detect planets going in front of the
star and we call that the transit method
and detectors that could measure that
precise drop in brightness didn't exist
yet to be successful all we'll need to
do is build a photometer a thousand
times better than anyone ever built one
but I'd worked on the Apollo program
I've worked on other programs that's not
really that scary you just need to get
down to brass tacks and find out what's
required and build it there just is no
way finding small planets in orbit
slacks out of the earth unless they go
into space you must go into space he
kept getting shot down by the review
panels for various reasons and each time
he fixed the reason and go back a second
time they basically said it's not going
to work well bill brookie didn't bother
reading that report or at least did not
take it to heart kept on his crusade to
show that transit detection should work
he was able to demonstrate in the lab
that he could measure the precision
required to find earth-size planets
orbiting sun-like stars some people call
it stubbornness but the point is I knew
it would work so he proposed and REE
proposed and eventually he conceived of
a discovery class mission that was later
called Kepler it was 25 years between
the date of publication and the date
that Kepler actually launched one zero
and liftoff of the Delta 2 rocket with
Kepler on a search for planets in some
way like our own
Kepler just delivered so much
tremendously new things we never even
conceived of and the things that were on
our wish list Kepler found for us this
data was being displayed for the first
time on the computer monitors and there
was the transit of that jupiter-sized
planet and the data was like beads on a
string Kepler has transformed our
understanding of exoplanets what Kepler
was designed to do specifically was to
go after terrestrial or rocky planets
that are in closer orbits to stars we
now know from the Kepler data that
planets like the earth are in fact
common in the galaxy and that's
something we fundamentally didn't know
before Kepler the first exoplanet was
already diverse and Kepler continued to
find more and more planets that didn't
fit the norm both in size in composition
in distance from their stars so when you
think about how many stars there are in
our galaxy a few hundred billion and if
each one has one or maybe more we're
looking at a few hundred billion planets
to accomplish something great you have
to have persistence to succeed in
exoplanets we have to be very ambitious
and very bold
Kepler's impact was extreme certainly
more than I ever ever imagined it's
basically opened up an entire new era of
astronomy
now that we know that the galaxy is
teeming with planets we are ready to go
to the next chapter of planetary
exploration I truly believe that the
2020s are shaping up to be a golden age
for observational astrophysics you know
we have these amazing telescopes like
test the transiting exoplanet survey
satellite we have w first which is this
Hubble sized telescope that can see a
hundred times as much of the sky in each
image we have the James Webb Space
Telescope which is you know the largest
and most powerful telescope we've ever
built
you know the reason that we can even
dream about that and create something
like that is because of the success of
Spitzer and Hubble and the previous
great observatories I'm looking forward
to space-based missions where they're
going to have coronagraph technology and
maybe even star shield technology - in
order to image exoplanets by blocking
out the light from stars and we have the
next-generation large 30 meter class
telescopes on the ground which are going
to be coming online in the 2020s but the
question that has me most excited about
the future of astronomy is to answer the
question are we alone in the universe
finding evidence of life on an exoplanet
finding an indication of a living world
is within our reach what is life life
it's a process to transfer information
from one generation to another everybody
is interested in the search for planets
the search for places the reminders of
home we're looking for some hint of our
origins where we came from and
exoplanets may very well provide that
context there may be more habitable real
estate out there beyond our solar system
than we once thought
I think we're naturally curious to find
out if there are other conditions in the
universe that might be similar to our
own and finding exoplanets around other
stars is the first important clue the
search for planets is a search for life
and even though we didn't really say
that out loud
that was always in the back of our minds
I guess you're about the only person
around it doesn't have TV coverage of
the food I don't mind it
they got the flag up now you can see the
Sun in the sky from all around the TV
picture now happen
Neal yes we are going a
all program
but biathlete