Exoplanet Anniversary: 1st Alien Worlds Confirmed 25 Years Ago Today

On Jan. 9, 1992, astronomers Alex Wolszczan and Dale Frail published a paper in the journal Nature announcing the discovery of two planets circling an incredibly dense, rapidly rotating stellar corpse known as a pulsar.

It was a landmark find: While several alien-world "candidates" had recently been spotted, Wolszczan and Frail provided the first confirmation that planets exist beyond our own solar system.

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