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New Planet Discoveries Signal a Shift in the Hunt for Alien Life
With ever more intriguing worlds found in the sun’s neighborhood, the search for extraterrestrials is set to take some bold new steps.
Palo Alto, CaliforniaOur galaxy is positively stuffed with alien worlds.
That exoplanets swarm the Milky Way, and that a good fraction of them are small, rocky, and temperate like the planet we live on, means the search for life beyond Earth is moving past the question of whether these worlds are common and on to the more profound question of whether those faraway worlds also host life.
“We’re no longer wondering if rocky planets are in the habitable zones of stars,” the University of Arizona’s Olivier Guyon said during last week’s Breakthrough Discuss conference, hosted by the Breakthrough Initiatives. “As far as we can tell, they’re everywhere. We’re transitioning into life-finding. We have a lot of work ahead of us.”
Whether planets
