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The Search for Our Planet's Twin
Walker & Company
October 2012
On Sale: October 16, 2012
304 pages
ISBN: 080277900X
EAN: 9780802779007
Kindle: B008AW5IDE
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction
In the mid-1990s, astronomers made history when they
detected three planets orbiting stars in the Milky Way. The
planets were nothing like Earth, however: they were giant
gas balls like Jupiter or Saturn. More than 500 planets have
been found since then, yet none of them could support life. Now, armed with more powerful technology, planet hunters are
racing to find a true twin of Earth. Science writer Michael
Lemonick has unique access to these exoplaneteers, as they
call themselves, and Mirror Earth unveils their
passionate quest. Geoff Marcy, at the University of
California, Berkeley, is the world's most successful planet
hunter, having found two of the first three extra-solar
planets. Bill Borucki, at the NASA Ames Research Center,
struggled for more than a decade to launch the Kepler
mission-the only planet finder, human or machine, to beat
Marcy's record. David Charbonneau, at Harvard, realized that
Earths would be much easier to find if he looked at tiny
stars called M-dwarfs rather than stars like the Sun-and
that he could use backyard telescopes to find them! Unlike those in other races, the competing scientists
actually consult and cooperate with one another. But only
one will be the first to find Earth's twin. Mirror
Earth is poised narrate this historic event as the
discovery is made.
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