I am flabbergasted that as a society we aren't rushing to build a 100 metre wide telescope mirror large enough for us to directly image the spectra of the potentially habitable exoplanets around us.
A telescope this large could tell us whether any of these potentially habitable planets contain oxygen, and thus, biological processes.
Yet thanks to funding cuts in science the biggest telescope we have in the pipeline right now is one with a 30 metre mirror.
This telescope won't be big enough, and as a result, our failure to push now for bigger sizes is almost certainly going to push back for decades humanity's ability to answer one of the most important questions we face:
A telescope this large could tell us whether any of these potentially habitable planets contain oxygen, and thus, biological processes.
Yet thanks to funding cuts in science the biggest telescope we have in the pipeline right now is one with a 30 metre mirror. This telescope won't be big enough, and as a result, our failure to push now for bigger sizes is almost certainly going to push back for decades humanity's ability to answer one of the most important questions we face:
Why are we here, and are we alone.