"But are any of those worlds actually inhabited? Here, as the end of 2025 approaches, that's still a great cosmic unknown. We don't yet know whether we're alone in the Universe or not, and if not, how common or rare life actually is. While we can send orbiters, landers, and rovers to worlds within our Solar System and scan the skies for signals that might arise from intelligent extraterrestrials,"
"Will we be able to get there? That all depends on how good our ever-improving coronagraph technology will be. With the new discovery of stellar companion HIP 71618 B, just announced in early December of 2025, we're definitively going to get to put our best efforts so far to the critical test. The ability to find our first "alien Earth" hinges on the outcome."
Humans have determined that stars are like the Sun and that many host planets, including Earth-sized worlds with similar compositions and governed by the same physical laws. Whether any exoplanets harbor life remains unknown. Most detections of extraterrestrial life will require direct exoplanet observations for biosignatures rather than only Solar System missions or technosignature searches. The Habitable Worlds Observatory aims to directly image Earth-sized planets at Earth-like distances around Sun-like stars. Success depends critically on coronagraph performance. The discovery of stellar companion HIP 71618 B creates a stringent, imminent test for coronagraph capabilities.
Read at Big Think
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]