7 trillion miles sounds like a long way away, but 1 light year is about 6.9 trillion miles, meaning that this planet would still be in the Oort cloud of our own sun,
The nearest star external to the solar system is 4.3 light years away (Proxima Centauri) and it's a red dwarf star, generally considered unsuitable for life as we know it. Planets within it's "goldilocks zone" would be close enough to the star to be tidally locked to it, as the moon is to Earth. That means it would have one permanently sunlit side and one side in perpetual darkness. Alpha Centauri, which Proxima orbits around, is a binary star, and is about 5.5 light years away.
Most red dwarves are "flare stars" - they have violent outbursts that would probably sterilize any planets that were close enough to otherwise have a chance of bearing life.
As far s I know, the only photos of planets they've gotten with ANY equipment is just another pin prick of light floating around a bigger pinprick of light. Since planets are very, very dim compared to the stars they orbit, the central star's light has to be blocked out to even get that pinprick of light from the planet. I don't think even the JWST is able to resolve continents, much less city lights, that far away.
I've seen this claim at other places on the internet, but I'm just not buying it. I have no doubt there is life elsewhere, but I don't believe Earth has developed the technology to take pictures of it yet. The vast distances involved in interstellar space means that even something as big as a planet still has too small an angular diameter at the distances involved to allow the resolution that would be necessary to actually take photos of the surface with enough detail to be meaningful. If the JWST had that kind of resolution, we should have already mapped the entire surface of Pluto, which is much closer than extrasolar planets, in pretty fine detail - at least as good as the detail we got from the Pluto probe of only a part of it's surface.
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The nearest star external to the solar system is 4.3 light years away (Proxima Centauri) and it's a red dwarf star, generally considered unsuitable for life as we know it. Planets within it's "goldilocks zone" would be close enough to the star to be tidally locked to it, as the moon is to Earth. That means it would have one permanently sunlit side and one side in perpetual darkness. Alpha Centauri, which Proxima orbits around, is a binary star, and is about 5.5 light years away.
Most red dwarves are "flare stars" - they have violent outbursts that would probably sterilize any planets that were close enough to otherwise have a chance of bearing life.
As far s I know, the only photos of planets they've gotten with ANY equipment is just another pin prick of light floating around a bigger pinprick of light. Since planets are very, very dim compared to the stars they orbit, the central star's light has to be blocked out to even get that pinprick of light from the planet. I don't think even the JWST is able to resolve continents, much less city lights, that far away.
I've seen this claim at other places on the internet, but I'm just not buying it. I have no doubt there is life elsewhere, but I don't believe Earth has developed the technology to take pictures of it yet. The vast distances involved in interstellar space means that even something as big as a planet still has too small an angular diameter at the distances involved to allow the resolution that would be necessary to actually take photos of the surface with enough detail to be meaningful. If the JWST had that kind of resolution, we should have already mapped the entire surface of Pluto, which is much closer than extrasolar planets, in pretty fine detail - at least as good as the detail we got from the Pluto probe of only a part of it's surface.
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