David Kipping

So we are entering a very exciting era where we can look at their planets.

We don't have to wait for them to visit us anymore.

We can actually start surveying where they're at and seeing what's up.

And that's just simple life, of course.

That's not even technological life.

So I think we're going to get answers.

And the only way to do this is to keep supporting missions like NASA's mission with these future observatories that are trying to get us to that point.

We're trying to build a mission now called the Habitable Worlds Observatory, HWO.

It'll probably get renamed at some point, like HWO.

I think it would be like the Carl Sagan Observatory, probably, would be a rebranding for it, is my hunch.

And that thing's trying to take photos, like we saw with Alpha Centauri.

It's trying to do photos, but of Earth-sized planets.

JWST can't image Earth-sized planets.

They're too small.

This thing will be able to take photos of Earths around other stars.

And it will see the pale blue dot of light of that other world.

And we'll get its chemical fingerprint.

We'll be able to sniff its atmosphere.

We'll pull their pants down, right?

We'll get the whole thing.