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Nature 459, 777-778 (11 June 2009) | doi:10.1038/459777a; Published online 10 June 2009

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Looking for planets like ours

Michael Brown1

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The hunt for habitable worlds near other stars brings home the realization that our own Solar System might not be as special as we think, says Michael Brown.

BOOK REVIEWEDThe Crowded Universe: The Search for Living Planets

by Alan Boss

Basic Books: 2009. 256 pp. $26, £15.99

Some 250 years ago, the philosopher Immanuel Kant laid out an account of the Universe that sounds remarkably modern. In his Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, he declared that moons go around planets, planets go around stars and stars go around the Milky Way.