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It absolutely will. One of the big advances in the past two decades was the discovery of exoplanets, and at this point we've discovered enough of them that we
by antognini 4y ago
It absolutely will. One of the big advances in the past two decades was the discovery of exoplanets, and at this point we've discovered enough of them that we can get reasonable constraints on their frequency (along with sketchier constraints on Earth-like planets). That alone removed one of the major uncertainties in the Drake equation.
JWST will be able to make far better measurements of exoplanet atmospheres than any other telescope, so this should start to constrain how many Earth-like planets have atmospheres with biological signatures. These constraints will remove the next big uncertainty in the Drake equation.
- digitalsankhara 4y agoAbsolutely. The resolution of the spectral plots in yesterday's images was amazing.