The Future Of Astronomy: The Starshade And Exoplanet Imaging
How we’ll directly take pictures of Earth-like planets in the future!
“We stand on a great threshold in the human history of space exploration. If life is prevalent in our neighborhood of the galaxy, it is within our resources and technological reach to be the first generation in human history to finally cross this threshold, and to learn if there is life of any kind beyond Earth.”
-Sara Seager
If you had asked an astronomer 25 years ago whether there were planets around other stars like the Sun, they would’ve told you, “probably,” but without a single example to point to. If you had asked just five years ago whether there were rocky planets like Earth around other Sun-like stars, they would’ve told you, “probably,” but without a concrete example of one. Yet as of today, in 2016, we’ve discovered more than two thousand confirmed planets around stars in other solar systems, including hundreds of rocky worlds, with perhaps eight-to-twelve of those rocky worlds in the right location to have liquid water and potentially life on the surface. Without improved technology, all we can do is speculate. But if we could measure the light coming from those rocky worlds, we could look for the signatures we associate with life:
- liquid, watery oceans and…
