Stellar Lithium as an Indicator for Exoplanets
Typically astronomers do not have a clear idea of which stars are best candidates for exoplanet searches. Last week in Nature, astronomers with the European Southern Observatory (ESO) announced that they believe they have discovered a proxy for stars that have orbiting planets. As the lead author of the paper, Garik Israelian, states “we have now found that the amount of lithium in Sun-like stars depends on whether or not they have planets.” The ESO announcement released last week is online here, and the Nature article wherein the findings are published are available here.