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B. Chiu (Boston, MA)
These are historical years, after 1995. In 1995, Mayor and Queloz of Switzerland published their paper on the discovery of 51 Pegasus, which gave the first certain signs of a large planet in a system outside our own. In 2001, a paper by Rubenstein in American Scientist showed that large planets close to their stars give off giant flares which (shown in another article) would be dangerous to life on any planet that may be in the system. However, the fact that most planets found, about 100 now, are large planets close to their stars, can well be explained by the fact we detect them when the reflex motions of the stars are large. When finer motions are detected, we can expect to find that more planets are out where our Jupiter is, so that there would be no superflares.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 34, #4
© 2002. The American Astronomical Soceity.