54 NEW Planets Discovered

[SagiCap]

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/3q-seager-kepler.html

Great. My natal just got a lot more complicated!

[Mark]

Astrologically, these exoplanets shouldn't have a direct bearing on our own solar system, though they could still be used when more is known about them. I'm sure those who work with fixed stars would like to know which stars are loners and which ones have planets. The number and kind of planets might even be able to tell something about the distant solar systems. It might prove to be the link between thinking of stars as tiny dots of light and thinking of them as whole systems unto themselves, like our own solar system.

I've been looking forward to seeing the images that might come out of the Kepler space telescope project. If you ask me, even though you didn't, I'd say that the exoplanets are less interesting than some other things that this telescope might show us. It should be able to provide much more information than Hubble, that lovely, old, near-sighted wreck. Hubble changed the way we look at the Universe and Kepler may stand to do the same. Every time we look further out with better resolution, we find something we didn't expect. I'm waiting on that: the unexpected.