http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=1115
If you want to put the hunt for planets around other stars in perspective, consider this. For almost all of our species’ time on this planet, we have looked at the planets in our own Solar System as unresolved points of light that seemed to move upon a celestial sphere. The brief time that we have been able to see more is measured since the invention of the telescope, a tiny window compared to the millennia that went before.
We are now working hard to see extrasolar planets as unresolved, moving points of light. In doing so, we’re looking at ways to image these planets that would yield the greatest scientific return. Recall former NASA administrator Dan Goldin’s wish to actually see the surfaces of distant exoplanets — he talked to putting such images on the walls of our schools. One day, starshade technologies coupled with space-borne telescopes may make that possible. For now, though, there is the real potential of something closer: identifying exoplanets with oceans.
The beauty of such an identification, writes Peter McCullough (Space Telescope Science Institute) is that we don’t actually need to resolve the planet to find out whether it has an atmosphere and an ocean. Here the scientist writes about what we can do with near-term technologies:
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