Searching for life on alien worlds

Twenty-seven years ago, at the University of Geneva, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz—now a professor at ETH—discovered the first extrasolar planet orbiting a sun-like star. Much has happened since that initial discovery: astronomers have now identified more than 5,000 exoplanets, many of a similar size to Earth, in over 3,700 different planetary systems. With only a tiny portion of the universe analyzed so far, it certainly seems plausible to suggest that life might exist on other planets outside our solar system.