Exoplanets: The Quest for Strange New Worlds (live public talk)

Original air date: January 12 at 7 p.m. PT (10 p.m. ET, 0300 UTC)

Planets orbiting other stars, or exoplanets, have become an important field of astronomical study over the past two and a half decades. Recent findings from NASA's Kepler mission suggest that nearly every star you see in the night sky probably has exoplanets orbiting it. The number of confirmed exoplanets is now a few thousand. This talk will present a brief history of exoplanet discoveries, the story of the “super-Saturn” extrasolar ring system, and summarize NASA’s ongoing future plans to discover and characterize “strange new worlds.”

Speaker: Eric Mamajek, Deputy Program Chief Scientist, NASA Exoplanet Exploration Program, JPL

[dbreardon]

I love NASA! For the first 32 years of my life I grew up in an era where the existence of plants outside our solar system was unknown. In fact, many people believed there were no plants outside our solar system! Reminds me of a time when people believed the sun orbited our planet and then boom, proof that the earth actually orbited our sun. Or when people would look at the night sky and see pinpoints of light thinking they were all stars and then the discovery to many of the lights we see in the night sky are actually galaxies like our own.


Discovery of planets outside our solar system is a huge hallmark change in our view and understanding of the universe. This is a huge seachange in our view of the universe and I have been around to witness it!

[Tripman]

This guy is amazing! Very professional, very dedicated, puts it in a simplistic beautiful way and doesn't give that "info-bloat-clichés". A wonderful talk and I've seen a lot of talks by DeGrasse Tyson, Krauss, Brian Greene, etc. This guy is one of my tops for sure!

[autotrance]

Beautiful presentation. Excellent use of visual aids and imagery to explain astronomical discoveries. It was almost like a documentary with educational elements. Thank you for the effort and making YouTube so much more valuable medium .

[Jolielegal]

Great talk. The speaker really knows the subject and is passionate about it.

[Jerry_from_analytics]

Ah that's a very nice talk, good speaker, interesting subject. Thank you for making it available.

[fwd]

Very nice, basic level, interesting and engaging talk. Thank you 😊

[njm]

Excellent talk. Exciting times in astronomy.

[commissarofsubversion]

We need someone to introduce our speaker… who’s the biggest dork in the building?

[Lexyvil]

Very great presentation. It only makes me question more how matter first got formed. We really should feel lucky to live in a time we can almost answer long-term questions.

[akapotatis]

Do you ever fall asleep watching youtube and wake up on a totally random video? How is it that I always end up here? 😂

[sewebb]

Well done! Excellent presentation. Thank you.

[greenrouxls]

161, 123 have watched this and only 108 of them didn't like the video. Wow, you guys are doing something right

[davidgarner]

great talk....couldn't turn it off even though its way past bedtime

[PhantomfTheRouter]

1:17:30 - Capture. There are plenty of rogues out there to stumble in at tangential angles for long orbits, or even the wrong direction for opposing system rotation.

[belllarosa]

Excellent lecture! Thrilling to know there are other solar systems out there different from ours. Wow..!!😱just impossible to visit as they are so far

[sharefactor]

The introduction is quite long and consists of basic information, so most could skip it. After the intro though it becomes mighty interesting!

[eclipse_]

I fell asleep watching something about aliens and here I am, I'm so happy I woke up to this 😂

[perttismedjebrandt]

It looks more like the Jupiter sized planet repels the star rather than pulling it towards it. How Come? (about 20 minutes to the lecture)

[CodeLeeCarter]

Another Awesome release from JPL, ... although Eric Mamajeks speech was quite wordy, I found he waffled and rambled a little too much.
Still, an awesome Exoplanet production, ... Thanks to everyone at #NASA n #JPL.
P.S ... I see the SoS, Mike Pompeo in Eric Mamajek mannerisms & face, ... Does anyone else see this?

[Aluminata]

A G class star, like the sun, that's only 15 million years old? Wow! Trying to imagine our Sun at that time and age...