The year 2011 has added 24 new planets to the zoo and a few days only to 2012 and the discovery of 4 more has been announced.
Since the discovery that earth revolves around the Sun, philosophers and scientist have only speculated for many centuries about the existence of planets revolving in other stars - extrasolar planets aka exoplanets. Since the dawn of human existence the first discovery happened in our generation. Back in 2005 the first confirmed detection was a giant planet orbiting the star 51 Pegasi. Since then, with more people looking, improved technology and observation techniques, and the launch of Kepler in 2009, the number of confirmed detection has dramatically increased. According to explanet.eu, there are 716 confirmed exoplanets as of December 23 2011, plus another 2,326 planetary candidates.
There are several methods in planet hunting. Nasa's Kepler uses the transit method and has added by far the most in the exoplanet zoo.
The most famous was from last year with the discovery an orbiting planet(Gliese 581g) from the star system Gliese 581. It has made media attention when its data has revealed that is was orbiting in a zone which could support life(goldilocks zone).We may expect further increase in rate in discovery if exoplanets but the question remains--Will we ever get to any of them?
If the Voyagers which was launch 1977 and is now travelling 40,000 miles per hour is headed towards the direction of Gliese 581, Voyager 1 and 2 would take about 320,000 years to reach it. By then, I would like to believe, that we would have developed a better technology to out run it. =)
But we are yet to witness these improvemtents. One in the table right now is the fuel of choice in sci-fi hollywood -- antimatter(like in the movie avatar and startrek).
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