Exoplanet Vision 2050

TL;DR

This paper projects the future of exoplanet research up to 2050, suggesting exponential growth in known exoplanets and discussing potential shifts in detection methods and scientific focus.

Contribution

It extrapolates current trends to predict exoplanet discovery numbers and explores future research directions and technological developments.

Findings

Almost 100 million exoplanets could be known by 2050 if current trends continue.

The detection era may shift from transit to combined transit and astrometry methods.

Astrobiology might become a significant focus in future exoplanet research.

Abstract

Is there any hope for us to draw a plausible picture of the future of exoplanet research? Here we extrapolate from the first 25 years of exoplanet discovery into the year 2050. If the power law for the cumulative exoplanet count continues, then almost 100,000,000 exoplanets would be known by 2050. Although this number sounds ridiculously large, we find that the power law could plausibly continue until at least as far as 2030, when Gaia and WFIRST will have discovered on the order of 100,000 exoplanets. After an early era of radial velocity detection, we are now in the transit era, which might be followed by a transit and astrometry era dominated by the WFIRST and Gaia missions. And then? Maybe more is not better. A small and informal survey among astronomers at the "Exoplanet Vision 2050" workshop in Budapest suggests that astrobiological topics might influence the future of exoplanet research.