Discovery of Exoplanets

The 1995 detection of 51 Pegasi b by Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz launched exoplanet science with a hot Jupiter orbiting a Sun-like star every 4.2 days. Since then, over 5,600 exoplanets have been confirmed, with more than 150 in habitable zones, a scale of discovery that dwarfs the single-object focus of #4 Dark Energy's supernova surveys. This 51 Pegasi b detection achieved a radial velocity precision of 10 m/s, a measurement threshold that was 30% tighter than any prior stellar wobble analysis, proving planets are common even around ordinary stars.