Eyes on the sky
Cerro Armazones in Chile’s Atacama Desert is the site for the European Extremely Large Telescope, which will be the world's largest telescope. (Copyright: Science Photo Library)
Efforts like Kepler to find Earth-like planets outside our galaxy may have ended recently, but astronomers say a wave of bigger and better missions is on its way. The data already collected suggests that there are about 100 billion planetary systems in our galaxy alone, says Mountain. So there are plenty of places left to look [for life], as and when we find the tools for the task.