CASPER
THE FRIENDLY GHOST
The first extrasolar planets to be discovered in 1991 were (to most astronomers' amazement) around a pulsar! Why this amazed astronomers was that no one could imagine how a planet could get to be around a pulsar. Any planets around the original star should have been destroyed in the supernova explosion which created the pulsing neutron star. Since then various theories about how the planets could be there have been passed around. In any case, radiation from the neutron star would make this stellar system very hostile to life as we know it. At present we can only detect Earth sized planets if they are around pulsars.