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by pault 2562 days ago
As other commenters have said, we don't have the tools to see that far yet, so it's only through a miracle of math, physics, and engineering that we can deduce the size, distance from the star, and atmospheric composition of exoplanets from variations in the brightness and color of a distant star over time. The James Webb telescope should help, but because of the nature of the technique our observations are constrained to solar systems that are perfectly aligned with ours, such that the planets pass directly in front of the star relative to the observer. It's possible that we can survey enough of those stars to get a rough idea of the ratio of life friendly planets, but we'll likely never know for sure. Maybe conditions for supporting life are correlated with alignment to the galactic plane!