Amateur Planet Hunters Find First Planet In a Four-Star System 52
The Bad Astronomer writes "For the first time, a planet has been found in a stellar system composed of four stars. The planet, called PH-1, orbits a binary star made of two sun-like stars in a tight orbit. That binary is itself orbited by another binary pair much farther out. Even more amazing, this planet was found by two "citizen scientists", amateurs who participated in Planet Hunters, a project which puts Kepler Observatory data online for lay people to analyze. At least two confirmed planets have been found by this project, but this is the first — ever — in a quaternary system."
Re:Pretty surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
And it serves to consistently push up the values of some of the terms in Drake's equation.
Back in the early 90's when I hung out with astronomers, the idea of finding exoplanets was still pretty new, and now it seems pretty commonplace.
To me, even if it's not intelligent life we'll ever make contact with, the likelihood that life has evolved on other planets seems like it would pretty much be a near certainty -- to me it has always seemed improbable that only our planet in the arse end of a galaxy would have done so.
Granted, the universe is a fairly hostile place that has lots of ways to wipe out a budding intelligent species. But the notion that we're singularly unique in terms of evolving life in all of that vastness seems improbable.