Astronomer and Associate Curator of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History Dr. Ruth Angus joins WIRED to answer the internet’s burning questions about exoplanets. What is the most extreme exoplanet? Have we discovered any habitable planets yet? How are the waves on Miller’s planet (Interstellar) so big? Answers to these questions and many more await on Exoplanet Support.
Image Credit: “HR 8799 Orbiting Exoplanets” by Jason Wang (Caltech)/Christian Marois (NRC Herzberg), licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0).
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For information about the American Museum of Natural History, visit or connect with the Museum on YouTube: @americanmuseumofnaturalhistory.
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#Space #Science #Exoplanet
00:00 – Exoplanet Support
00:16 – The 9th planet of the solar system
01:07 – Keeping up with the Keplerians.
02:53 – Exoplanet (noun): That’s free real estate
03:23 – Tatooine is real, pass it on
04:17 – The floor is lava, literally
05:17 – 10/10 atmosphere, would recommend
06:49 – Earth’s great, but Kepler-186f just gets me
08:50 – We got Earth 2.0 before GTA 6
10:01 – Mars is looking pretty good now, huh?
10:42 – 👽 Earth detected: Mostly water, mild anxiety + high taxes
11:34 – Intergalactic house hunting
12:40 – The grand cosmic photobomb
13:53 – Born to shine, forced to orbit
14:43 – Zoom in 10,000,000,000x
15:51 – Methane detected. Either there’s life or it’s Taco Tuesday
17:00 – 55 Cancri e: The 18-hour year
17:51 – Galactic third wheeling
19:01 – Out of orbit, out of mind
19:27 – SETI is always left on read
20:11 – Catfished by a starspot
22:13 – The surf on Miller’s planet hits different
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@themarquis336
November 10, 2026 at 4:22 pm
It’s wild to me how obsessed people are with alien life without really understanding anything about space or astronomy and they really think there are intelligent civilisations out there when, in reality, that is an extraordinarily unlikely thing and what actual researchers are looking for and consider as “life on other planets” is the possibility of finding microbes and perhaps, if we are extremely extremely lucky, something like a microscopic organism that may use something like photosynthesis to exist. And if we ever found something like that it would be the greatest discovery of this millenium for people who can actually understand the implications of such a find, while people who believe there may be aliens looking at us could never understand it and would have the nerve to be disappointed.
Not to mention the completely troubling obsession of people with finding other inhabitable planets while making absolutely no effort to care for the only planet that is and realistically will ever be inhabitable. It’s sickening, to be honest.
Science fiction has corrupted people’s imaginations to really upsetting degrees. People think they know space when they don’t even begin to grasp the inexplicable unlikeliness of the extraordinary coincidence that we are here at all.
If people knew how almost entirely unlikely almos definitely impossible their ideas about space and alien life are, they would be a lot less keen to click on videos like these.
@Фигаро-т4с
November 10, 2026 at 4:32 pm
Does she know if exo will come back as 9? 😔
@holdenstipe
November 10, 2026 at 4:33 pm
““For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16 ESV
@rainecormier2935
November 10, 2026 at 4:33 pm
19:59 I went to college with Freeman Dyson’s granddaughter and the way my jaw dropped after knowing her for several years and discovering she was his family when I was in an astronomy class and I brought him up. Even the professor was like “yer kidding!”
Really wonderful human beings, both her and her grandfather 💯
@AndrewJohnson-oy8oj
November 10, 2026 at 4:35 pm
Great booking choice, this presenter is wonderful. More of YouTube needs to be genuine experts making accessible good faith answers to questions.
@Eljannnxo
November 10, 2026 at 4:36 pm
I love her accent and explanations, could listen to her for hours
@John_Smith_86
November 10, 2026 at 4:38 pm
5:00
@jarosawjozefczak518
November 10, 2026 at 4:43 pm
Fascinating, love to see knowledge passed on with such passion 👍
@skateboardscott
November 10, 2026 at 4:51 pm
Bryony Cox
@herkamer98
November 10, 2026 at 5:00 pm
Seems ExplainLikeImFive got the bulk of the questions…
@ytmadpoo
November 10, 2026 at 5:32 pm
Maybe the Interstellar planet only seemed tidally locked because of time distortion. Once they got on the surface they realized that it does have some rotation in that time scale. What they saw further out as a standing wave on a tidally locked planet turned out to be a slowly rotating planet over years with a wave that ever so slightly moved around. Whoops!
@iambiggus
November 10, 2026 at 5:49 pm
StarTalk! 🤩👍❤️
@bigguix
November 10, 2026 at 5:50 pm
so good ! <3
@ross-carlson
November 10, 2026 at 6:05 pm
Who ever does the recruiting for this series has hit another banger.
@iambiggus
November 10, 2026 at 6:07 pm
If this woman and Dr Brian Cox had a baby, child’s charisma could resist the power of a Black Hole itself!
@anthonybyrnes-404
November 10, 2026 at 6:22 pm
That was really good. Astronomers and Astrophysicists usually frame what they say in a way that would make a snake oil salesman blush. They needn’t do it. She was just straight up to the facts of what we know so far and honest.
@BrickTamlandOfficial
November 10, 2026 at 6:27 pm
she looks like she could play Aerith live in a ff7 movie lets make it happen yall.
@david_s5693
November 10, 2026 at 6:32 pm
00:50 Alternatively, it could be a grapefruit-sized black hole (which would be very hard to detect with optical telescopes)
@MitchellShilling
November 10, 2026 at 7:00 pm
For some reason, she looks like Jennifer Aniston.
@SaltySkip
November 10, 2026 at 7:04 pm
She is a dancer or something. Her hand moves go crazy smooooth
@zam6877
November 10, 2026 at 7:34 pm
The more we learn the specific configuration necessary for consistently livable planets
This is shrinking the likelihood
Less likely to have that star trek future
@NYYFanSince1968
November 10, 2026 at 7:42 pm
Y2B is going to be rough
@SierraKyliuk
November 10, 2026 at 8:03 pm
You guys should get dr.katie mack for particle physics in space! Or explaining the stages of the big bang
@Angelus1701D
November 10, 2026 at 8:18 pm
Why does she look so disheveled like she just woke up for this thing?
@chrismoore2284
November 10, 2026 at 8:23 pm
Is no one going to talk about how “This Hour has 22 Minutes” is a comedy show in Canada?! I bet some producer there is laughing their way to a new segment