About this talk

Sometime in 2026, we will discover our 10000th exoplanet, a world around a distant star. This population of worlds has proved remarkably diverse, but hasn't produced any world like our own. We ask whether this is a coincidence, or whether it could be that our own world is special – and how we might investigate other worlds like our own when we do find them. The discovery of 51 Pegasi b, the first exoplanet around a normal star, in 1995 started a revolution in astronomy. With more than 6000 confirmed planets now known, and thousands more likely to be revealed when data from the Gaia satellite is released later this year, it seems like a good time to consider what we can learn from a sky that is now known to be as full of alien worlds as any science fiction writer could want. Together, these discoveries are starting to give us a brand new story of how planets form and evolve, and in the process some of the oldest ideas in astronomy are being challenged.

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