Dispatches from AAS: 3,000 Exoplanets and Counting

If you want to know what scientists are thinking about, you don’t need to ask—all you need to do is count. That’s what I did as I was touring the Long Beach Convention and Entertainment Center in Long Beach, California, where the American Astronomical Society is currently holding its semi-annual meeting. I tallied meeting abstracts, scientific sessions, press conferences, and (more impressionistically) casual conversations in the pannini-and-pizza lunch area. So what is on the mind of the world’s greatest explorers of the cosmos? By any measure, the answer comes down to one word: exoplanets.