An artist’s concept of the view from the surface of exoplanet TRAPPIST-1f.
We live in the middle of a golden age of space exploration –most of it by people sitting over computers in their offices, analysing data downloaded from telescopes on Earth or in the far reaches of the galaxy.
Technology has enabled our knowledge of the universe to expand at a rate undreamt of even 50 years ago. There’s every chance that many people who witnessed the first moon landing in 1969 will live to see the discovery of life on another planet. As computing power and the number of techniques for finding planets continue to grow, so does the number of exoplanets – planets outside our solar system – that have been identified.
First, a little arithmetic to give some perspective. It is estimated there are between 200 billion trillion stars, in between 200 billion and 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe. That’s 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars. Most of these have planets. In the years since the first exoplanet was confirmed in 1992, we have discovered 5500 planets at last count. If, therefore, there are 200 billion trillion stars, then 5500 is at best 0.00000000000000000275% of the planets that probably exist. So, even though we haven’t yet discovered one capable of supporting life, there are still plenty left to check out.
OUT OF THE PAST
To understand planets beyond the solar system, we first need to know a lot about this one. Lisa Kaltenegger is an astrophysicist, astrobiologist, and co-founder of the Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Her bio describes her as a pioneer and world-leading expert in modelling habitable worlds and their light fingerprints. She is also the author of more than 100 peer-reviewed research papers, and her recently published book, Alien Earths, is an approachable and inspiring introduction to the search for alien life.
One of Kaltenegger’s main focuses is astrobiology and the history of our