2012 California Science Education Conference

Many hundreds of planets have recently been discovered around other stars, and the new Kepler mission in space is promising hundreds more. However, many of these planets are completely different from any we have known in our solar system and are revealing a universe of new planet possibilities. We will discuss the clever methods astronomers are using to discover planets beyond the solar system, the strange and unexpected kinds of planets they are finding, and what this means for the possibility of science students on other worlds.