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And that question is:

Are there planets like ours elsewhere in the universe?

This is the question answered in this amazing book authored by Dr. Fabienne Casoli (of the Astrophysics Space Institute in Paris and the University of Paris) and Dr. Therese Encrenaz (of the Space & Instrumentation Institute in Paris and the Paris Observatory). This book was originally published in French and later translated to English.

You don't have to have any prior scientific understanding to read this book as everything is explained and defined in the main narrative.

A planet orbiting a star other than our solar system's Sun is called an extrasolar planet or, more commonly, an exoplanet. (As of Nov. 2008, more than three hundred exoplanets have been detected and confirmed.) An exoEarth is an Earth-like planet not of our solar system. (Similarly, scientists talk of exoJupiters, exoSaturns, exoNeputunes, etc.)

You can imagine the immense difficulty in directly imaging these planets when you consider that the typical star would be about a billion times brighter than its orbiting exoplanet(s). Therefore, indirect methods to find exoplanets must be used.

After an intriguing and brief introductory chapter, this is where this book begins. Four major methods of exoplanet detection are detailed and exoplanet discoveries since 1995 are examined.

Then the book considers what we have learned from our own solar system and discusses the formation of solar systems in general. (Solar system formation must be understood in order to understand planet formation.)

From there, there is a fascinating chapter that considers the possibility of life in the universe and extraterrestrial civilizations.

The final chapter deals with the exciting future of exoplanetary exploration with respect to space missions (some of which are now occurring) and telescopes.

The main narrative is written in an interesting way. Each of the chapters is divided into titled sections. Above each section (in bold-face type) is a sentence that summarizes the detailed contents of a particular section thus making the book easy to read.

For example, chapter 3 is entitled "Twelve years of discovery." Section 6 of this chapter is entitled "Cannibal Stars?" The sentence that summarizes this sections detailed contents reads as follows:

"The probability of detecting a planet is greater if its star contains more of the heavy elements."

(A heavy element is any chemical element with an atomic mass equal to or greater than that of carbon.)

Almost on every page is at least one coloured illustration (in the form of a photograph, chart, graphs, etc.). I found that these helped immensely in understanding material introduced in the main narrative. My favourite photo has the following caption:

"The first image of an extrasolar planet taken in 2004...The planet here appears in red and at the centre is the brown dwarf [a low-mass star] ."

(I know! I know! Above I said that exoplanets are difficult to image but special cases can be imaged.)

A feature of this book is that it has a glossary. This glossary is somewhat unique in that it defines terms that deal with exoplanets.

As well, there are two interesting appendices titled "The eight planets of the solar system" and "The first 200 extrasolar planets" respectively. These two appendices allow the reader to compare physical and orbital parameters of exoplanets to those of our solar system's planets. Fascinating!!

Finally, my only minor complaint with this book is that the illustrations (photographs, graphs, etc.) are not labelled with the numerical indicators figure 1, figure 2, etc. As I indicated above, this book is composed of numerous colour illustrations sometimes with more than one illustration appearing on a page. Thus, I START TRANSACTION WITH CONSISTENT SNAPSHOT; /* 1444 = fd8c8575fd55f3fd79975c88b4cc05a7