Distant Wanderers: The Search for Planets Beyond the Solar System

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0387950745, Hardcover)

After centuries of speculation and decades of advanced high-tech searches, astronomers are just now getting solid evidence of "distant wanderers" -- planets outside our own Solar System. Armed with new tools and techniques, researchers have made enormous strides in planet-searching in the last few years. And the results of their efforts are nothing short of spectacular.

In a refreshing and approachable style that will appeal to the non-specialist, veteran science journalist Bruce Dorminey explains what has already been found and what is likely to be found as astronomers gaze further and more clearly into space. The early returns, he reports, are amazing: planets come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. They are searingly hot and and mind-bogglingly cold. Some have nearly circular stable orbits, others follow wildly elliptical paths. And some recently discovered planets seem to have no orbits at all, but wander star-less.

In interviews with dozens of cutting-edge astronomers, exobiologists, and other scientists, Dorminey shows us how planets outside our Solar System are a great new frontier -- the source of unimaginable and totally unexpected new information about the cosmos.