Right out of nowhere.
Scientists are expanding the range of worlds that could orbit in habitable regions of their stars—worlds that are rocky, such as the Earth, and could have just the right temperature to host life.
Of the eight planets discovered in the latest finding discussed today, 6 January, the scientists consider two to be pretty close in range to Earth. They are called Kepler-438b and Kepler-442b, after the space observatory that discovered them.
…Oh. Right. We can see extrasolar planets with our telescopes, now. We’re no longer wondering if other star systems have them: we’ve known that they could, for decades. And we’re routinely finding non gas giant planets all the time now. Yup.
The future creeps up on you, you know?
Via Instapundit.
Moe Lane
Yeah, that one doesn’t surprise me.
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Finding good pizza in Florida, that’d surprise me.
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Mew
Actually, we still can’t “see” other planets per say. Since they give off no light, there would be no way to see them with current technology. They are not visible, not yet.
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However just as oceans are effected by moon’s gravity, a star can wobble because of their planets. Once we can detect a star’s “wobble” to the pull of their planets, we plug in some math and we can draw a picture of the entire system.