In the final frontier, how should we behave?

Who doesn’t feel the tug of Orion’s bow string when staring into the deep, cold magic of the night sky? After all, the constellations were named by ancient peoples with rich imaginations and a deep desire to understand their place in a vast, inexplicable, and empty cosmos.

“There’s something great about astronomy,” says Swiss physicist Didier Queloz. “When we talk about planets and stars, everybody has this mental picture of what it is.”

But hold on, say astronomers, just how empty of life is that vastness?

That pointed question of our unique – or not – place in the cosmos, is prodding 21st-century people in ways the ancients may never have imagined.

On Wednesday, a new space telescope took to