‘Exoplanets, the Quest for New Worlds in the Cosmos’

The search for planetary systems, or exoplanets, orbiting around other stars and, in particular, the ambition to find planets similar to the Earth is, from the point of view of science, technology and philosophy, one of the great enterprises of our time. Until very recently, our solar system provided the only basis for our knowledge of planets and life in the Universe. This changed in 1995 with the discovery of the first giant planet outside our system. This discovery has led to a real revolution in our understanding of the formation and evolution of planets, and the methods of detection of systems similar to Earth.