What we found when we went looking for another Earth

In the last few years, scientists have discovered thousands of exoplanets - and a lot of them are surprisingly weird. Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don’t miss any videos: Watch part 2, How to find a planet you can’t see, here: In 1584, Italian friar Giordano Bruno argued that other stars had planets of their own and that those planets had inhabitants. He had no real proof of his claims — they just felt true. But they were heretical enough to get the attention of the Roman Catholic Church. The Inquisition arrested Bruno, put his tongue in a vice, and burned him at the stake. Four hundred years later, the idea of “exoplanets” (the term for planets outside our solar system) had become much more popular. Books, TV, and movies teemed with alien worlds orbiting alien suns. But one thing remained the same. We still had no proof that they existed. Then, in 1995, astronomers discovered 51 Pegasi b — a planet orbiting a sun-like star in the Pegasus