April 21, 2025

— Arthur C. Clark

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A few more than 9, as it turns out ...

My third grade teacher, Mrs. Crozier, taught us a mnemonic device to remember the nine planets in order. It went like this:

• My - Mercury
• Very - Venus
• Educated - Earth
• Mother - Mars
• Just - Jupiter
• Showed - Saturn
• Us - Uranus
• Nine - Neptune
• Planets - Pluto

Then, Neptune and Pluto's orbits switched places for 20 years, and then Pluto got downgraded to a "dwarf planet."

But the biggest change in planetary understanding in our collective lifetime was revealed to the world 33 years ago today, on April 21, 1992.

That would be the day on which the discoveries of a Polish astronomer named Aleksander Wolszczan were announced.

Born in 1946 in post-war Poland, Wolszczan grew up under the shadow of communism, but also in the glow of a rising space age: starting with Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin, and the American moon landings. He gravitated toward radio astronomy--a field that uses radio waves to explore distant parts of the universe--and eventually made his way to the United States.

Using the "Arecibo" radio telescope in Puerto Rico, Wolszczan detected a strange signal from a pulsar called PSR B1257+12: a rapidly spinning neutron star left behind after a supernova explosion.

These pulsars were known for their clock-like precision, but this one had slight, regular anomalies in its timing. To Wolszczan, the pattern suggested something remarkable: gravitational tugs from unseen companions.

Over two years, he confirmed that those tugs were caused by planets orbiting a dead star. Wolszczan and colleague Dale Frail published their results in the journal Nature, announcing the discovery of the first confirmed exoplanets—planets beyond our solar system.

Wolszczan’s pulsar planets were strange and inhospitable, but they proved for the first time that planetary systems existed elsewhere, and his work laid the foundation for future discoveries.

Building on his work, just three years later, the Swiss astronomer team of Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz found the first exoplanet orbiting a sun-like star: 51 Pegasi b.

The era of exoplanet exploration had officially begun.

In the decades since Wolszczan’s discovery, thousands of exoplanets have been identified -- meaning Mrs. Crozier would have to have come up with a much more complex mnemonic device if she were still teaching elementary school.

But more to the point, some of these exoplanets are located in the so-called habitable zone where liquid water might exist.

And just to bring things all the way up to last week, a team of researchers say they've found the strongest indication yet of extraterrestrial life, located on a gigantic planet known as K2-18b, orbiting a star that's about 120 light-years from Earth.

As the New York Times reported: "A repeated analysis of the exoplanet’s atmosphere suggests an abundance of a molecule that on Earth has only one known source: living organisms such as marine algae."

We need a quote. As a Polish radio astronomer and a team of Swiss researchers, Wolszczan, Mayor, and Queloz aren't necessarily in the English-language quote business.

Fortuantely, we have a few other sources. Let's go with the science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke​, probably best-known for co-authoring the screenplay for 2001: A Space Odyssey, based on his short story, The Sentinel:

Either way, it's worth finding the answer.

​If you aren't also subscribed to Understandably, you can follow me there!

Did you see ...

• How Texas officials invited the rigging of the state lottery: Texas lottery executives blessed a scheme that ensured one player would win a $95 million jackpot in 2023. The caper has underscored a sense that almost nothing is on the level. (The New York Times)
• The man helping Silicon Valley find God: The religious app Hallow has 23 million downloads, A-listers and JD Vance as fans. What's its secret? (The Telegraph)
• ‘I am not who you think I am’: how a deep-cover KGB spy recruited his own son. (The Guardian)
• More immigrants opt to self-deport rather than risk being marched out like criminals. (The Los Angeles Times)
• The U.S. Supreme Court temporarily paused deportations under Alien Enemies Act. ICE buses filled with Venezuelans were heading toward a Texas airport, but turned around when the order came down, according to an NBC News video. (CNN, NBC News)
• Galina Trefil, a horror writer, announced on Facebook last month that her 86-year-old father, Dr. Jon Trefil, had confessed to a decades-long killing spree of 400 people across multiple states. The post has been shared over 16,000 times, prompted over 5,000 comments and become fodder for true crime discussions across the internet. But police say they've conducted an extensive investigation of her claims including hours of interviews with her father and cross-referencing his DNA with the nation’s cold case database, and conclude that there's no evidence Jon Trefil has killed anyone, let alone hundreds. (SF Gate)
• Sgt. Dakota Meyer, who received the Medal of Honor for actions in Afghanistan in 2009, reenlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve last week after 15 years as a civilian. Meyer is apparently a personal friend of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who swore him in at the Pentagon. (Stars & Stripes)