Discovering New Worlds

How unique is Earth? How many potentially life-sustaining worlds are out there? Figuring out how planets form is the key to unlocking a part of our universe that has so far been hidden.

Over the last decade, with the help of the Kepler space telescope, astronomers have found hundreds of planets outside our solar system —exoplanets. Most don’t look like what they expected and don’t fit the existing ideas of how planets were created.

To help guide the search for Earth-like planets, Professor Doug Lin of UC Santa Cruz put forth a novel and compelling theory of planetary formation. With funding from UCRI’s Lab Fees Research Program and a partnership with scientists at Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Labs, Lin explored the possibility that planets form in the disk around a new star and then migrate to their final positions. His new model accurately explains what we see in the sky.

Using Lin’s groundbreaking work, astronomers have already discovered several Earth-sized planets that may be habitable. By seeding the science behind these amazing discoveries, UCRI hopes to better understand our universe and gain deeper knowledge about the origins of our own planet.

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