DID a European team not play fair when it announced the discovery of the first rocky planet outside our solar system, pipping US astronomers to the post? Maybe so, if some comments by the Americans are anything to go by.
The tense but friendly rivalry goes back to 1995, when a team led by Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz of the University of Geneva in Switzerland discovered the first ever extrasolar planet. Soon after that, a US team led by Geoff Marcy and Paul Butler of the University of California, Berkeley, went on to find many more of these massive…
