[MUSIC PLAYING] 
[Caroline Piaulet] Exoplanets are planets just like the planets in our solar system, but they orbit around other stars, such as the stars you can see in the sky. 

[Luis Welbanks] Personally, I think it's very important to study them because it gives us context to our place in the universe. 

[Nikku Madhusudhan] Planets come in a much, much more diverse range of properties than just what we see in the Solar System. 

[Caroline Piaulet] I see astrophysics and searching for exoplanets as intrinsically exploratory. We want to understand everything about the universe and the type of objects that are out there. 

[Luis Welbanks] It tells us whether Earth is special, whether the Solar System is special, and it's like a family tree. We're populating it, and seeing the little branches, and seeing which planets are closer to us, which ones are cousins, which ones are relatives. 

[Caroline Piaulet] Now we are able to search for atmospheres just like the atmosphere of the Earth, but around other smaller rocky planets, around other stars. 

[Luis Welbanks] With so many exoplanets out there, it really depends too on ... It really depends on what questions we want to answer. 

[Nikku Madhusudhan] Are we going to be focused purely on rocky planets, or should we expand our search to larger planets, which could also be potentially habitable? 

[Caroline Piaulet] The other thing that I'm really excited about is learning about a new type of planet that we have evidence for that's called "water world". 

[Nikku Madhusudhan] And we theorized the existence of these worlds, which are mostly water, which are water dominated. 

[Caroline Piaulet] We don't see the surface of these planets. So, everything we can say about the surface, we infer from looking at the atmosphere. 

[Nikku Madhusudhan] You can actually detect atmospheric features in this planet. 

[Luis Welbanks] I am particularly very excited to see if there's any underlying behavior in our population of planets. Are they linked by some sort of rule? Is there a rule for how planets work? 

[Nikku Madhusudhan] Like, the Holy Grail is "are we alone?" So, for the longest time, we weren't sure if Webb was actually going to answer that question. 

[Luis Welbanks] On Earth, our concept of life changes depending on cultures, depending on history. So, I am certain that by the end of the lifetime of JWST, we will have a different idea of what life means, and Webb will help inform that.