Are there planets around all the suns?

Answer 1

Unfortunately this question cannot be answered fully. It is bathed in history.

At first, the Earth was the centre of the Solar System and Universe; the stars were just beyond the orbit of Saturn. Then the Sun was the centre of the Solar System but we were still the centre of the Universe. As technology increased, we found out more about our small and insignificant area of the Universe.

However "words" have not kept up with technology. The Sun is just another star, along with the trillions of other stars. (A recent survey found out that only 55% of Americans know that the Sun is a star)

However, things are slowly catching up - the Sun (Capital S) is our sun (Similar to our Moon (capitalised) compared to other moons) and a sun is a star at the centre of a solar system.

The term Solar System (Capitalised is our solar system) whereas, a solar system is any other with planets orbiting a central star or sun.

Confused? You should be.

So:

• Sun - is our star
• Star - Is any luminous body radiating light (but even that has definition problems)
• sun - Any star with objects orbiting it
• Solar System - Our Sun and the planets
• solar system - any sun and planets orbiting it.

It's worth noting, that as we peer further into the Universe, we will find more and more planets orbiting a star/sun and eventually the dictionary may change.

I personally prefer Sun for our own Sun and star for everything else.

Answer 2

There are certainly not planets around _ALL_ of the suns, but more and more, we're discovering that planets are probably as common as, well, "dirt". Some stars in multiple systems are unlikely to have planets, although it's possible that there might be very distant planets orbiting the center of mass of the multi-star system, or tiny planets very close to one or another of them. Super-giant stars may be unlikely to have planets.

But so far, we've discovered over 1000 planets orbiting other stars - an ASTONISHING number, considering the unlikeliness of discovery. The Kepler Space Telescope detects planets that occult - block the light of - the parent star. That means that only solar systems with their planetary plane oriented directly at the Earth might be visible. For solar systems with orbital planes that aren't Earth-aligned, the planet would never block the star's light.

So it is likely that planets are fairly common.