This week, Ira spoke with Jason Steffen, Associate Professor of Physics at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who helped organize Exoplanets IV, being held in Las Vegas through May 6 and presented by The American Astronomical Society. In this Interplanetary episode of Ira’s Everything Bagel, Jason talks about when he discovered his passion for exoplanets; why the sub-discipline of exoplanets contributes to understanding our own solar system; how 10 exoplanets were discovered when he began his studies and there are no 5,000; how planetary systems form and the different paths they could have taken; the different methods (some of which are complementary to each other) for studying them, including the transit method; discovering the first exoplanet orbiting a star like our sun in 1995; and why the discipline is diversifying.
