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One must appreciate how big space itself actually is. Let me give you an example, the closest star to Earth (other than the sun) is alpha centuri which is about 4 light years away. That is about 24 trillion miles. Now, astronomers are trying to "see" objects that are only a few thousand miles across from this enormous distance. I put the word see in quotation marks because we cant actually see the exo-planets. We measure their gravitational and optical effects on the parent star. if the planet is massive, a small wobble will be visible in the star. Another method exploits an astronomical phenomenon known as a transit. When the planet passes in front of the star it temporarily dims the light and thus gives us a means to detect the planet.

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