Expert expects by 2030 to locate hundreds of habitable exoplanets

Lecavelier des Étangs chairs the Commission of Exoplanets and the Solar System within the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

By 2030, hundreds, or even thousands, of potentially habitable exoplanets will have been detected, a number and a variety that suggests life can be found in these remote objects even before our own Solar System, according to astrophysicist Alain Lecavelier des Étangs.

I am more optimistic about finding life first in exoplanets because of the diversity, there are planets so different that I would be surprised if none of them could sustain a kind of life, the French scientist explained in an interview with Efe.

Lecavelier des Étangs chairs the Commission of Exoplanets and the Solar System within the International Astronomical Union (IAU), which holds its general assembly until Friday in Vienna.

The astrophysicist remembers that almost 4,000 of these bodies have been detected since the first exoplanets were located two decades ago, a number that is constantly increasing.

Lecavelier des Étangs also affirmed that there are not two exoplanets that are the same and that things that were not expected and that were even considered impossible are being discovered.

With the exoplanets we are discovering a new field that goes beyond our imagination, he said and gave as an example the existence of planets that "evaporate", which are so close to the stars around which they orbit their atmosphere "boil", he said.

It would be boring if all the planets were like those of the Solar System. At the end of the next decade, by 2030, we will have hundreds, if not thousands, of habitable planets, he said.

Due to this variety, Lecavelier des Étangs considers the discovery of extraterrestrial life possible in the coming decades.