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NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope could help solve these 5 exoplanet puzzles

The study of alien worlds is about so much more than finding alien life

an illustration of planets beyond our solar system in a long curving continuous line

The James Webb Space Telescope will help astronomers answer fundamental questions about planets beyond our solar system (illustrated), including what these planets are made of and how they form. 

JPL-Caltech/NASA, R. Hurt/SSC-Caltech

By Elise Cutts

Detecting exoplanets used to be so difficult that scientists spotted the first black hole, detected the leftover radiation from the Big Bang and took snapshots of countless distant galaxies before discovering the first planet beyond our solar system in 1992.