For many decades, Earth and its galactic neighbors were the only known planets in the universe. This was finally to change in 1995: At that time, a team led by Swiss astronomer Michel Mayor succeeded in adding the exoplanet 51 Pegasi b, which is 40 light-years away from us, to the star charts with definite certainty.

This galactic milestone, in turn, was to be the prelude to a large-scale cosmic search that has already identified more than 4,800 exoplanets in over 3,500 systems.

How the search for these alien worlds proceeds in detail, and how a sophisticated artificial intelligence recently succeeded in discovering more than 300 new exoplanets, we’ll show you now!