MISSIONS to scan the skies for habitable planets have come a step closer, after a technique called “nulling interferometry” discovered its first planet.
Most planets known so far were found by detecting the gravitational influence on their home star, but nulling interferometry should allow astronomers to see planets directly. It works by combining the light from a star in such a way that it is cancelled out, making fainter details around it more visible.
Philip Hinz of the University of Arizona and his team used the Magellan telescope in Chile to study a 10-million-year-old star called HD 100546. Their nulling…
