Exoplanets - Worlds Beyond our Solar System w/ Thayne Currie

<p>Exploring exoplanets — worlds orbiting alien stars — talking with Thayne Currie of NAOJ, who recently found a bizarre massive planet.</p> <p>This week on The Cosmic Companion, we look at exoplanets — worlds orbiting alien stars. We are joined by Dr. Thayne Currie, astrophysicist at The Subaru Telescope, who recently discovered a planet nine times more massive than Jupiter orbiting a young star a little over 500 light years from Earth.</p> <p>On 21 March 2022, NASA confirmed the 5,000th confirmed exoplanet, marking a milestone in our understanding of the Cosmos.</p> <p>Three decades before, the first exoplanets were found orbiting pulsars — rapidly spinning corpses of stars, during the second week of 1992. This was the week Kristi Yamaguchi won the US female Figure Skating championship, Paul Simon opened a tour of South Africa, and President George H. W. Bush got ill at the home of the Japanese Prime Minister.</p> <p>On 6 October 1995 (the day after O.J. Simpson was found innocent of murder), astronomers announced the discovery of 51 Pegasi, the first exoplanet found around a healthy, active, main-sequence star.</p> --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/the-cosmic-companion/message Support this podcast: <a href="https://anchor.fm/the-cosmic-companion/support" rel="payment">https://anchor.fm/the-cosmic-companion/support</a>