[MUSIC] Studying planets, moons and meteorites from

our own solar system has taught us a lot about the origin of our Solar System,
and ultimately, why we're here today. It may surprise you, but
up until very recently, we did not know if the planets of our Solar System
were the only ones in the universe. It seemed likely that planets were
also orbiting other stars, but we had no observations of them. In 1989, the firs
t object orbiting
another star was detected and there has been an explosion
in the numbers ever since. The results have persuaded us that
most of the stars have planets and this poses the next question. Could there be
life on some of them? This plot shows you the characteristics of
the first planets that were discovered. Not surprisingly, it's easier to detect
large planets than small planets and most of the first detected planets
were therefore Jupiter-sized. It's also easier to detect planets
orbiting close to the star and thus with short orbital periods. And as you can s
ee,
none of these early planets come close to the 365 days it takes for
the Earth to orbit the Sun. Better instruments and in particular, the Kepler sat
ellite,
have improved the situation dramatically. In the years since the Kepler's
launch in the spring of 2009, the diagram had been populated
with more and more planets. And as you can see,
we now have many Earth-sized planets although none of them
have a 365 day orbital period. If we keep looking,
everything suggests that we will eventually find a planet very
similar to the Earth out there somewhere. This diagram is particularly
important if we talk about life. It illustrates that around each star
there is a so-called habitable zone. Within this zone the central star
keeps the planet's surface at a temperature where liquid water is
stable, not too hot and not too cold. Planets within the habitable zone, such as
Kepler-22b,
are prime candidates to harbor life. In a not too distant future, we will be
able to probe the atmospheres of planets within the habitable zone, provided
they have an atmosphere of course. And as you will see later
in the origins course, oxygen could be a tell-tale
sign of life on the planet. There are countless stars in the universe,
but remarkably, planets seem
to outnumber the stars. Life on more than one of them is
certainly and still an option. It's my hope that I'll live to
see what could be the biggest discovery of all time, detection
of life elsewhere in the universe. [MUSIC]