Youth plus experience: the discovery of 51 Pegasi b

IF 0.8 4区物理与天体物理 Q2 HISTORY & PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

The European Physical Journal H Pub Date : 2015-12-10 DOI:10.1140/epjh/e2015-60041-5

Davide Cenadelli, Andrea Bernagozzi

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引用次数: 4

Abstract

In 1995, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz announced they discovered 51 Pegasi b, the first planet ever found around a star other than the Sun. This discovery turned out to be a milestone of recent astronomy, as it opened up a new field of research that is growing impressively these days. However, 51 Pegasi b has surprising properties as compared to the planets of the Solar System, as it is a giant planet on a very close-in orbit around its parent star. Hence, its discovery was unexpected and its actual existence did not go unchallenged. In the following years, a passionate debate sprang up, and finally astronomers accepted it, but at the price of a deep revision of our understanding of how planetary systems are formed and evolve. In the present paper, we reconstruct the dynamics of the discovery of 51 Pegasi b and the first exoplanets, the quarrel that arose among astronomers and the final acceptance of the existence of planets with unexpected characteristics. This remarkable story is recounted by means of published literature as well as interviews with several of its main protagonists.

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青春加经验:51天马座b的发现

1995年，米歇尔·马约尔(Michel Mayor)和迪迪埃·奎洛兹(Didier Queloz)宣布，他们发现了51 Pegasi b，这是在太阳以外的恒星周围发现的第一颗行星。这一发现被证明是近代天文学的一个里程碑，因为它开辟了一个新的研究领域，如今这个领域的发展令人印象深刻。然而，与太阳系的行星相比，51 Pegasi b具有令人惊讶的特性，因为它是一颗巨大的行星，在非常近的轨道上围绕其母恒星运行。因此，它的发现是出乎意料的，它的实际存在也并非没有受到质疑。在接下来的几年里，一场激烈的辩论爆发了，天文学家最终接受了这一观点，但代价是我们对行星系统如何形成和演化的理解发生了深刻的改变。在本文中，我们重建了51座飞马座b和第一批系外行星的发现，天文学家之间的争吵以及最终接受具有意想不到特征的行星的存在的动力学。这个非凡的故事是通过出版的文学作品以及对几个主要主人公的采访来讲述的。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

The European Physical Journal H HISTORY & PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE-PHYSICS, MULTIDISCIPLINARY

CiteScore

1.60

自引率

10.00%

发文量

审稿时长

>12 weeks

期刊介绍： The purpose of this journal is to catalyse, foster, and disseminate an awareness and understanding of the historical development of ideas in contemporary physics, and more generally, ideas about how Nature works. The scope explicitly includes: - Contributions addressing the history of physics and of physical ideas and concepts, the interplay of physics and mathematics as well as the natural sciences, and the history and philosophy of sciences, together with discussions of experimental ideas and designs - inasmuch as they clearly relate, and preferably add, to the understanding of modern physics. - Annotated and/or contextual translations of relevant foreign-language texts. - Careful characterisations of old and/or abandoned ideas including past mistakes and false leads, thereby helping working physicists to assess how compelling contemporary ideas may turn out to be in future, i.e. with hindsight.