Astronomers believe that every star in the galaxy has a planet, one fifth of which might harbor life. Only we haven’t seen any of them — yet. Jeremy Kasdin and his team are looking to change that with the design and engineering of an extraordinary piece of equipment: a flower petal-shaped «starshade» that allows a telescope to photograph planets from 50,000 kilometers away. It is, he says, the «coolest possible science.»
