Looking for New Earth New extrasolar planets no longer make the
news. The number of known exoplanets currently stands at 218 and
climbing, and the International Astronomical Union has deemed it
utterly impractical to give them names. However, most of the
known exoplanets are inhospitably large and gaseous – like
Jupiter, but bigger. This is simply because bigger planets are
easier to find. Although we have actual pictures of some planets
(where “pictures” means the entire planet is shown in about the
same number of pixels as Mario’s head on the original NES, but
you take what you can get) the smaller ones have all been
detected indirectly, by examining the minute wobbles a planet
produces in its star’s position or gravitational field. In
today’s issue of Nature, scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion
Laboratory report on a lab prototype telescope capable of
visually resolving Earth-like planets at a distance of 30 light-
years. It’s an immense technical feat, but a number of
engineering challenges (and yeah, poli