There are more than 5,000 known worlds beyond our solar system. Since the 1990s, astronomers have used ground and space-based telescopes to search for signs of planets beyond our tiny corner of the universe. Exoplanets are notoriously difficult to directly image because they’re so far away from Earth. But scientists know the signs, looking for wobbles of stars as orbiting planets use their gravitational pull, or dips in starlight as planets pass in front of their stellar hosts. It’s highly likely that there are hundreds of billions more exoplanets just waiting to be discovered. Part of the excitement around the James Webb Space Telescope is its ability to peer inside the atmospheres of potentially habitable planets and discover new worlds. This week, the space observatory certainly delivered. Other worlds The Webb telescope confirmed the existence of an exoplanet for the first time since the space observatory launched in December 2021. The world, known as LHS 475 b, is almost exactly t...
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