When Space.com opened its doors to the world on July 20, 1999, humanity knew about fewer than 30 exoplanets. Today, as you read this article, that number shoots well beyond 5,000.
If you'd believe it, the first worlds beyond our own were confirmed only about seven years before this website's first article was christened; they were orbs anchored around a spinning neutron star named PSR B1257+12 (more on that in a moment). As for the headline of our first article, however? Well, we may never know. It would appear it was lost to time — a mysterious server fire destroyed our records of it, and The Wayback Machine is not coming to our rescue.
If anyone can locate it, you know where to find me. Before we get into how those extraterrestrial tens turned into thousands, there's another way to put the exquisitely short timeline of exoplanet research into perspective. Consider how July 20, 1999, was also the 30th anniversary of NASA's Apollo 11 launch.
That means before identifying a concrete planet outside our solar system, scientists hadn't only managed to send humans to space, but had even landed people on the moon six times. When Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface, he did it while believing our cosmic suburbia's nine planets (poor Pluto was still an official planet then) might be the only ones out there. Related: The 10 most Earth-like exoplanets It was as though all the exoplanets needed a couple of brave guinea pig worlds to prove the coast is clear, because, after 19.
