We know next to nothing about the other 6 billion or so Earth-like planets in the galaxy. With the imminent launch of the largest, most powerful space telescope ever built, Laura Kreidberg is optimistic this will soon change.
Kreidberg is the 32-year-old founding director of a new department at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, devoted to studying what the weather is like on alien worlds. So far, she and her team have scrutinized the atmospheres around Jupiter-size exoplanets (planets orbiting other stars). When it comes to small, rocky exoplanets that could potentially harbor life, current telescopes lack the resolving power to do much more than tally the number that are out there. But NASA’s $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), set to launch in December after decades of planning and construction, will allow astronomers like Kreidberg to peer into rocky planets’ skies and, she said, “turn these planets into places.”
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