With a Wild Surmise: A New Era of Exoplanet Exploration

It is now clear that exoplanets are ubiquitous in the galaxy. Though our understanding of exoplanet demographics has dramatically expanded over the last quarter-century, many fundamental questions about their origins and physical properties remain. For example, we lack a complete understanding of the chemical and physical processes shaping exoplanet atmospheres, including a full description of their clouds, the abundances of specific species, and the role of disequilibrium chemistry. We also do not well understand what makes a terrestrial planet habitable, with conditions conducive to life, rather than a dead planet. The atmospheric characterization of exoplanets plays a key role in helping us answer these questions. Now, with the first two years of JWST observations complete and the construction of new ground-based facilities, we have begun a new era of exoplanet exploration. I will discuss what atmospheric characterization observations have shown us, and what we can expect to see in the next few years, about planet formation pathways and evaluating the potential habitability of exoplanets.