Explore Exoplanets: The Discoverers; Ep. 17 Ben Montet (part 1)

Innocent Until Proven Planet! 🛰️⚖️🪐

"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." - Arthur Conan Doyle

Dr. Ben Montet set out to study black holes and then radio transients, and along the way he discovered exoplanets! His team gathered enormous amounts of radial velocity data on stars that eventually helped them identify signals that, after eliminating all other possibilities, meant they were planets orbiting those stars. Find out which of the 20 planets he's helped find is his favorite, as well as his favorite fictional planet, in the latest installment of Explore Exoplanets!

Have you ever wondered what it's like to discover a brand-new world? In the last few decades, we've found over 5,000 planets outside our solar system, called exoplanets—and there are likely millions, if not billions, more! Join Dr. Jessie Christiansen, Lead Scientist at the NASA Exoplanet Archive at Caltech IPAC as she interviews the brilliant minds behind the discovery of new planets in "Explore Exoplanets: The Discoverers." Hear about their eureka moments and their favorite fictional planets, which Jessie will match to their closest real-world counterparts in the NASA Exoplanet Archive. Come explore the cosmos, one exoplanet at a time!

Check out all of the Explore Exoplanets episodes on YouTube and the Explore Exoplanets website.