Exoplanets: Finding, Exploring, and Understanding Alien Worlds

by Christopher R. Kitchin

Exoplanets: Finding, Exploring, and Understanding Alien Worlds probes the basis for possible answers to the fundamentals questions asked about these planets orbiting stars other than our Sun. This book examines what such planets might be like, where they are, and how we find them. Until around ten years ago, the only planets that we knew about were within the Solar System. The first genuine planet beyond the confines of the Solar System was discovered only 1988. Since then another 350 or so exoplanets have been detected by various methods, and most of these haven been found in the last ten years. Although many more exoplanets discoveries may be expected to occur even as this book is being read, a large enough data set is now available to form the basis for an informed general account of exoplanets. The topic hence is an extremely "hot" one - all the more so because the recently launched Kepler spacecraft should soon start uncovering many more exoplanets, some perhaps comparable with the Earth (and therefore possibly alternative homes for mankind, if we could ever reach them). Exoplanets: Finding, Exploring, and Understanding Alien Life gives a comprehensive, balances, and above all accurate account of exoplanets.

Genres: Nonfiction, Physics

297 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2011

About the author

Christopher R. Kitchin AKA Chris Kitchin & C.R. Kitchin

Reviews

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a nice introduction to the various methods of exoplanet detection. The author then catalogs how successful each method has been and anaylzes the bounds on what each can accomplish.

There are lots of tables which are not very enlightening and a bit difficult to read but seem to have been included for posterity or just escaped from the appendix. They clutter up the text something aweful.

I know this book is about detection of exoplanets, but i was a little disappointed that there wasn't more in there about planet formation. A little solar system evolution couldn't have hurt either.

Also, the auor is careful to make the "at publication" distinction, which i appreciated and which demonstrates just how quickly the field of planet hunting is expanding in scope while refining its accuracy. Case in point: Formalhaut b, claimed to be a 4 Jupiter mass exoplanet in this book was recently removed from the list of candidates upon closer inspection!

Overall, this was great as a survey of detection methods and a growing atlas of planetary oases in that dark, endless sunouvabitch, our universe.

[Samuel Viana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Started to read this one after thinking this could be a book of popular science about the subject of exoplanets. The first chapters are clear to understand for anyone without previous knowledge of the subject but after the chapter three it enters in technical details and discussion and I was not able to apprehend it anymore. Better find any other book without technical gibberish - but describing what these distant worlds can and cannot be. More like "scientific speculation", as I could speak of it.