chapter 1 Quest for other worlds the exciting times we live in We are living in an extraordinary age of discovery. After millennia of musings and a century of false claims, as- tronomers have finally found definitive evidence of planets around stars other than the Sun. A mere twenty years ago, we knew of only one planetary system for sure--ours. Today we know of hundreds of others. What's more, thanks to a suite of remarkable new in- struments, we have peered into planetary birth sites