Until 1995, despite the many hypotheses put forward over the years, no one had ever confirmed the presence of other worlds outside our Solar System. With the official discovery of the first of these, therefore, a whole new era for astronomy has begun!
We are talking about 51 Pegasi b, about 50 light years from us in the constellation Pegasus. It is a gas giant planet, with a mass about half that of Jupiter, but it orbits very close to its star, completing an orbit in just four days.
The proximity to the star, which is similar to our Sun, means that temperatures on 51 Pegasi b are extremely high, at around 815° Celsius. Because of its characteristics, this type of planet is called a “hot jupiter”.
51 Pegasi b does not have a solid surface and the intense radiation from the parent star creates a decidedly hostile environment, which certainly does not make it an ideal candidate for the search for life.
However, its discovery was revolutionary because it proved that planets around other Sun-like stars can exist, paving the way for the discovery of thousands of them and the search for habitable worlds.
