Going back to 1990, we hadn’t even found one planet outside of our Solar System. As we close in on 6000, we now see many of them directly.
This composite image shows a brown dwarf star, center, with the first directly imaged exoplanet, 2M1207 b, in red alongside it. This image was acquired in 2004 by the Very Large Telescope in Chile, operated by the European Southern Observatory. In the years and decades since, dozens of more exoplanets have been directly imaged, with hundreds more expected in the next decade.
Key Takeaways
-
The field of exoplanet sciences has exploded in recent years, driven by several methods leading to the detection of thousands of now-confirmed exoplanets. -
While the transit and stellar wobble methods are still the most prolific, the science of direct imaging is bringing us some of the most important results in exoplanet science, including prospects for life. -
Will we find the first inhabited exoplanet soon, and will direct imaging be the technique that gets us there? It’s a fascinating idea, and one that this podcast helps bring us closer than ever to answering.
Sign up for the Starts With a Bang newsletter
Travel the universe with Dr. Ethan Siegel as he answers the biggest questions of all.
It’s hard to believe, but it was only back in the early 1990s that we discovered the very first planet orbiting a star other than our own Sun. Fast forward to the present day, here in 2025, and we’re closing in on 6000 confirmed exoplanets, found and measured through multiple techinques: the transit method, the stellar wobble method, and even direct imaging. That last one is so profoundly exciting because it gives us hope that, someday soon, we might be able to take direct images of Earth-like worlds, some of which may even be inhabited.
Although it may be a long time before we can get an exoplanet image as high-resolution as even the ultra-distant “pale blue dot” photo that Voyager took of Earth so many decades ago, the fact remains that science is advancing rapidly, and things that seemed impossible mere decades ago now reflect today’s reality. And the people driving this fascinating field forward the most are the mostly unheralded workhorses of the fields of physics and astronomy: the early-career researchers, like grad students and postdocs, who are just beginning to establish themselves as scientists.
In this fascinating conversation with Dr. Kielan Hoch of Space Telescope Science Institute, we take a long walk at the current frontiers of science and peek over the horizon: looking at the good, the bad, and the ugly of what we’re facing here in 2025. It’s a conversation that might make you hopeful, angry, and optimistic all at the same time. After all, it’s your Universe too; don’t you want to know what comes next?
Sign up for the Starts With a Bang newsletter
Travel the universe with Dr. Ethan Siegel as he answers the biggest questions of all.
The Juno spacecraft, orbiting and imaging Jupiter since 2016, is still succeeding. Without a further extension, the mission now faces death.
In the search for life in the Universe, the ultimate goal is to find an inhabited planet beyond Earth. How will we know when we’ve made it?
At the end of July, hundreds of scientists convened to plan NASA’s upcoming astrophysics flagship mission. Will the US allow it to happen?
Somewhere, at some point in the history of our Universe, life arose. We’re evidence of that here on Earth, but many big puzzles remain.
The hunt for extraterrestrial life begins with planets like Earth. But our inhabited Earth once looked very different than Earth does today.
Since even before Einstein, physicists have sought a theory of everything to explain the Universe. Can positive geometry lead us there?
