Are we alone in the universe? Its a fundamental question for Earth-dwelling humankind. Are there other worlds like ours, out there somewhere? In Hidden in the Heavens, Jason Steffen, a former scientist on NASAs Kepler mission, describes how that mission searched for planets orbiting Sun-like stars, especially Earth-like planets circulating in Earth-like orbits. What the Kepler space telescope found, Steffen reports, contradicted centuries of theoretical & observational work & transformed our understanding of planets, planetary systems, and the stars they orbit. Kepler discovered thousands of planets orbiting distant stars, a bewildering variety of celestial bodies, including rocky planets being vaporised by the intense heat of their host star; super-Earths and sub-Neptunes, with properties simultaneously similar to and different from both Earth and Neptune; gas giants several times the size and mass of Jupiter; and planets orbiting in stellar systems that had only been imagined in science fiction.
