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A time will come when men will stretch out their eyes. They should see planets like our Earth. Christopher Wren
We now know that the movement of the planets is incredibly predictable. By understanding the code we can model their orbits far back into the past and thousands of years into the future. Professor Marcus du Sautoy, The Code III: Prediction, BBC 2011
Would Eris officially become our tenth planet? Or would Pluto-sized objects be reclassified as a whole? The Universe s1e11: The Outer Planets, History 2007
Our Solar System now officially consists of eight planets. ibid.
Further discoveries over the next decade would show that eccentric orbits are common in the universe; while the circular orbits of our own solar system seem to be rare. The Universe s2e1: Alien Planets
While the pulsar planets might not be pleasant places to visit, they have taught us something fundamental about planet formation in the universe. If nature is so good at making planets even under difficult circumstances then the odds are fairly high that the universe is full of planets. ibid.
They are edging ever closer to finding Earth-like planets. ibid.
Hot Jupiters are a class of exo-planets. Hot Jupiters orbit tightly around their stars. Far closer than Mercury to our own sun. And all that intense heat makes for some wild weather. The Universe s2e15: Wildest Weather in the Cosmos
Planets come in two size groups: large gas giants like Jupiter and small rocky terrestrials like Earth. The Universe s2e16: Biggest Things in the Universe
Only in the last decade has the very existence of exo-planets gone from theory to reality. The Universe s3e9: Another Earth
Are there planets beyond our Solar System? … Hundreds of these exotic worlds have been found: could any of them be home to alien life? The Universe s9e4: Ancient Mysteries Solved: Alien Worlds
At last he [Keppler] had created a model of the universe that matched the evidence. Keppler had demolished an edifice that had stood for more than 2,000 years. And replaced it with his first law of planetary motion: all planets travel in ellipses around the Sun. Michael Mosley, The Story of Science, BBC 2010
We should be a two-planet species ... Carl Sagan, the great noted astronomer once said, ‘We need to be a two-planet species.’ Michio Kaku
We want to live on a planet: how are we going to do it? Michio Kaku, Sci-Fi Science: Physics of the Impossible s2e1: Earth 2.0, Science 2010
I have to find a nearby planet in our solar system … We have to create Earth-like conditions … We need a planet teeming with life. ibid.
Terra-forming another planet is no longer just a dream. ibid.
That’s what got us in trouble in the first place – interfering with Nature. Meddling. Doesn’t anybody understand that? … Stop interfering. Leave Nature alone: haven’t we done enough damage?… And the supreme arrogance – Save the Planet. Are these people kidding? Save the planet? We don’t even know how to take care of ourselves. We haven’t learned to care for one another – we’re gonna save the fucking planet? George Carlin, Napalm & Silly Putty
By the way, there’s nothing wrong with the planet in the first place – the planet is fine. The people are fucked! Compared with the people, the planet is doing great; it’s been there over four billion years … Believe me, the planet has put up with much worse than us … The planet isn’t going anywhere, folks. We are. We’re going away. Pack your shit, we’re going away. And we won’t leave much of a trace. Thank God for that. Nothing left. Maybe a little styrofoam. The planet will be here and we’ll be gone. Another failed mutation. Another closed-end biological mistake. The planet will shake us off like a bad case of fleas, and it will heal itself, because that’s what the planet does – it’s a self-correcting system. The air and water and earth recover and be renewed, and if plastic is not degradable, well, most likely, the Earth will include it in a new paradigm. Earth plus plastic. The Earth doesn’t share our prejudice against plastic. Plastic came out of the Earth; She probably sees it as one of her many children. In fact, it could be the reason the Earth allowed us to be spawned in the first place – it wanted plastic and didn’t know how to make it. It needed us. That could be the answer to our age-old question: why are we here? Plastic, assholes! ibid.
Hodgkin’s Law of parallel planet development. Star Trek s2e25: Bread and Circuses, Kirk’s log
Terraforming makes you feel a little god-like. Star Trek: The Next Generation s1e18: Home Soil, female scientist on planet to away team
I will not let this planet destroy my crew. Star Trek: Voyager s3e1: Basics II, Janeway
This is the age of planetary exploration. Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan, Cosmos: Heaven and Hell, PBS 1980
If we lived on a planet where nothing ever changed, there would be little to do. There would be nothing to figure out. There would be no impetus for science. And if we lived in an unpredictable world, where things changed in random or very complex ways, we would not be able to figure things out. But we live in an in-between universe, where things change, but according to patterns, rules, or as we call them, laws of nature. If I throw a stick up in the air, it always falls down. If the sun sets in the west, it always rises again the next morning in the east. And so it becomes possible to figure things out. We can do science, and with it we can improve our lives. Carl Sagan, Cosmos
The planet itself is a super-living organism. Chris Everard, interview Outside the Box 19th June 2008
Just a few months ago for the first time ever scientists in Scotland saw the new planet. It was fifty-one light years away. Horizon: Planet Hunters, BBC 2000
What makes it even more difficult is that planets don’t generate their own light; they only deflect a small amount of light from their parent star. ibid.
The wobble these planet hunters are trying to detect is minute. ibid.
Pulsars are thought to be dead stars which have exploded in a supernova. All that’s left is a tiny spinning body just the size of a city but tremendously dense, releasing pulses of deadly radiation up to six hundred times a second. The three new planets were orbiting the remnants of one of these strange dead stars. ibid.
One of the stars they were studying was 58 Peg ... No-one had ever actually seen the planet orbiting 58 Peg; they had only seen the star wobble. But this went down in history as the first triumph of the planet hunters. ibid.
For the first time ever we could see the light from a planet outside our own solar system. ibid.
The time may have come to say goodbye to Planet Pluto. Horizon: Bye Bye Planet Pluto, BBC 2006
Dr Tyson ignored the outcry. He was convinced Pluto didn’t deserve the privilege of planethood. ibid.
Gliese 581c: the smallest and most-Earth-like exoplanet ever discovered. Horizon: Are We Alone in the Universe? BBC 2008
Observe how system into system runs,
What other planets circle other suns. Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, 1711
Never in my wildest dreams did I think we would ever find planets orbiting a neutron star, a supernova. Alex Filippenko
We would estimate there are fifty billion, maybe sixty billion Earth-like planets within just our Milky Way galaxy alone. Geoff Marcy
The sort of planets we are discovering are monsters. Beth Biller, University of Hawaii
The night sky is ablaze with stars, hundreds of billions in our galaxy alone, many larger, brighter and more majestic than our sun. On the scale of galaxies and stars, the planets of our solar system are little more than grains of sand caught momentarily in the light of the sun. But on those motes of dust for over four billion years great stories have played out unseen. Brian Cox The Planets I: Different Worlds, BBC 2019
Today, Mercury is the closest of all, enduring the sun’s full glare. Further out lies Venus, choked by a thick atmosphere. Then Venus’s neighbour Earth. And farthest of all Mars, a cold desert world. Together they form the only rocky so-called terrestrial planets in the solar system. ibid.
Each appears to have a moment when it enjoyed almost Earth-like conditions. Every one of our rocky neighbours has a story of what might have been. ibid.
Mercury is a small tortured world. More than any other planet, it’s endured the unflinching glare of the sun for billions of years. ibid.