Guiding our search for life on other earths

A telescope will soon allow astronomers to probe the atmosphere of Earthlike exoplanets for signs of life. To prepare, Lisa Kaltenegger and her team are modeling the atmospheric fingerprints for hundreds of potential alien ...

Hunting molecules to find new planets

It's impossible to obtain direct images of exoplanets as they are masked by the high luminous intensity of their stars. However, astronomers led by UNIGE propose detecting molecules present in the exoplanet's atmosphere in ...

The European Extremely Large Telescope moves closer to reality

(PhysOrg.com) -- The governing body of the European Southern Observatory, the ESO Council, has approved ESO’s budget for 2012. This includes preparatory work on the road to the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) ...

Searching for life on alien worlds

Twenty-seven years ago, at the University of Geneva, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz—now a professor at ETH—discovered the first extrasolar planet orbiting a sun-like star. Much has happened since that initial discovery: ...

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