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" Because Alpha Centauri is so close, it is our first stop outside our solar system. There's almost certain to be small, rocky planets around Alpha Centauri A and B. "

Debra Fischer

Solar

System

Small

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" Science requires speculation, creativity, and wild ideas. "

" Ultimately, what we're looking for in the long run is to find other Earth-like planets. "

" Once we see stars with three times the metal content of our sun, the planet detection rate goes up to 20 per cent. "

" If few worlds have microbial life, it dramatically reduces the chances that more complex organisms exist. "

Debra Fischer

Chances

Exist

" In 1999, my team discovered that the star Upsilon Andromedae was circled by three gas-giant planets - the first distant multiplanet system ever found. That same year, other researchers observed the first 'transit' of an exoplanet - a planet blocking out a small fraction of the starlight as it passes in front of the star. "

" We now know that stars which are abundant in heavy metals are five times more likely to harbor orbiting planets than are stars deficient in metals. "

Debra Fischer

Planets

Know

" Diamond planets truly are the most precious. "

" The first exoplanet to be found around a sun-like star was discovered in 1995, just two years before I began studying exoplanet detection. "

" The gas-giant planets in our solar system all have large moons. "

" When stars form a planet, they come in a bunch. "

" One of the first thoughts I had, when doing early exoplanet research, was that Earth and its many companions seemed very different from the planetary systems we were detecting. "

" The building blocks of life are readily available throughout the universe. "

" There may be hundreds of small seed planets - or planetesimals - which grow in the disk of matter around a star. "

" 55 Cancri is extraordinarily rich in heavy elements and extraordinarily efficient at making planets - much more so than our sun - and those elements are the very ones you need to make planets that aren't just gas giants. "

" Naturally, we think that finding another Earth-like planet is identifying a site that's at least friendly here for the evolution of life. The primary goal of the Kepler mission is to statistically assess the occurrence of these small terrestrial worlds. "

" Kepler's blown the lid off everything we know about extra-solar planets. "

" Before 1995, the only planets we knew about were the planets in our solar system. "

" Generally speaking, exoplanets can be any size, and they are found in a wide range of orbits. Some have massive gas atmospheres; others are smaller with an icy or rocky composition. "

" Computers can't find the unexpected, but people can when they eyeball the data. "

" Our field is very focused on finding Earth 2.0, and anything we can do to narrow the search is helpful. "

Debra Fischer

Finding

Focused

" There's no doubt that the search for planets is motivated by the search for life. Humans are interested in whether or not life evolves on other planets. We'd especially like to find communicating, technological life, and we look around our own solar system, and we see that of all the planets, there's only one that's inhabited. "

" The universe has told us the most common types of planets are small planets, and our study shows these are exactly the ones that are most likely to be orbiting Alpha Centauri A and B. "

" It can be very hard to know the history of a particular star, but once in a while, we get lucky and find stars with chemical compositions that likely came from in-falling planets. "

" As our sensitivity improves, we are finally seeing planets with longer orbital periods, planetary systems that look more like our solar system. "

Debra Fischer

Look

Seeing

" Whether a star has planetary companions or not is a condition of its birth. Those with a larger initial allotment of metals have an advantage over those without. "

" A 'serious' scientist in 1992 or 1993 had to admit the possibility that planets were really rare, that most stars might not have planets. We've gone from there to here - where most stars have planets. "

" I hope that vigorous space exploration continues and that humankind will have a space station that resides between Earth and the moon. Outside the gravitational field of Earth, we could launch robotic spacecraft to other destinations in our solar system. "

" It now seems logical that all the stars, like our own sun, must have formed with a system of planets around them. "

" Within the scientific community, there is healthy skepticism. And the question is, 'How do you ever get to a meaningful null result? How long and how hard do SETI scientists have to look for extraterrestrial intelligence and find nothing before they say, 'There is nothing. We are alone.' "

" Prebiotic chemistry on other worlds is going to be common. Plenty of small rocky planets will have similar chemistry. It's almost a given. "