YOU could be forgiven for having missed the discovery of the 100th planet orbiting distant stars. But for planet hunters, reaching this milestone earlier this year symbolised a coming of age.
In 2002 alone, the number of planets astronomers have discovered by detecting wobbles in a star’s orbit has nearly doubled. Wobbles happen when a planet’s gravitational field tugs on its star’s orbit, but detecting them is a painstaking process and takes as long as the planet takes to orbit its star. No wonder, then, that most of the planets found so far are enormous gas giants in small, irregular…
