Telescopes

Astronomers are ready to search for the fingerprints of life in faraway planetary atmospheres. But first, they need to know where to look — and that means figuring out which planets are likely to have atmospheres in the first place.

The first planet beyond our solar system was identified just 30 years ago. Since then, thousands have been found and characterized. As we look for more, exoplanet experts are also probing for signs of alien biospheres hundreds of light-years away. In this episode, co-host Janna Levin speaks with astrophysicist and astrobiologist Lisa Kaltenegger about how we’ll know we’re not alone in the cosmos.

Astronomers are reveling in the James Webb Space Telescope’s discoveries about the formative epoch of cosmic history.

Giant black holes were supposed to be bit players in the early cosmic story. But recent James Webb Space Telescope observations are finding an unexpected abundance of the beasts.

Theory has it that “Population III” stars brought light to the cosmos. The James Webb Space Telescope may have just glimpsed them.

Reports that the James Webb Space Telescope killed the reigning cosmological model turn out to have been exaggerated. But astronomers still have much to learn from distant galaxies glimpsed by Webb.

For Lisa Kaltenegger and her generation of exoplanet astronomers, decades of planning have set the stage for an epochal detection.

In 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope released a historic image of a supermassive black hole in another galaxy. The follow-up — an image of Sagittarius A* — shows it shimmering at the center of our own.

Scientists have never been able to adequately explain where lightning comes from. Now the first detailed observations of its emergence inside a cloud have exposed how electric fields grow strong enough to let bolts fly.