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Scientific issues and innovations are figuring into everyday conversation more than ever before. Recognizing that we could all use some brushing up, Seed offers its Cribsheet.

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Exoplanets

Since the 1990s, we have found hundreds of worlds— exoplanets—orbiting other stars. This Cribsheet explains three ways astronomers can measure a star’s light over time to infer the presence of exoplanets. It also discusses “habitable zones,” regions of space around a star where life as we know it can exist, and tracks our progress in the search for other Earth-like planets.

Download the Crib Sheet

Illustrator: Southwest— www.southsouthwest.com.au Writer: Lee Billings Consultant: Greg Laughlin, Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California, Santa Cruz. Habitable Zone: Derived from an image created by Gabriel Rodriguez Alberich, viewable here. This Habitable Zone image is used and released under the terms of the GFDL. Lowest Exoplanet Masses: Jean Schneider’s Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia, http://exoplanet.eu/

 

Originally published February 14, 2008

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