What are the planets outside our solar system like? Astrophysicist and TED Fellow Jessie Christiansen has helped find thousands of them (and counting), and the variety is more wonderful and wild than you might imagine. She shares details on the trends emerging from the data — including the intriguing possibility of “super-Earths” — and what the discovery of exoplanets means for existential questions like: Where do we come from, and how did we get here?