Exoplanets

The holy grail in the search for exoplanets is to find a rocky, Earth-like planet that orbits its star in the "habitable zone", where is liquid water is possible. There are several ways to detect these planets, and even determine what their atmosphere is like, but by far most exoplanets that are discovered (over 1000 now) are huge gas giants like Jupiter, unlikely to support life. However, as we know from our own gas giants, these massive planets can often have very interesting moons, so the recent discovery of a Jupiter-like planet in our galaxy is causing a bit of a stir, not because of the planet itself but because it very probably has rocky moons also in the habitable zone.

 Gliese 581d

There's a new generation of space-based and Earth-based observatories in the works. They're going to blow the top of a frikkin' mountain to make a platform for one of these observatories, the "European Extremely Large Telescope"! (The ethics of that is something for another day.) There is also the Giant Magellan Telescope which should be operational in Chile within a decade. These are going to be crazy powerful (and expensive) telescopes which very well may change the way we see space. Apparently, this next generation will even be able to directly observe a planet the size of Earth at 20 lightyears away, as opposed to the indirect methods of detection now used.

Here's a good article on the future of this science: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130829-the-new-hunt-for-alien-worlds

Newest planet discovered. Eleven times bigger than Jupiter. (Artistic impression, of course)

More reading: 

http://exoplanets.co/extrasolar-planets/how-many-exoplanets-have-been-found-in-a-habitable-zone.html

http://phl.upr.edu/press-releases/fivepotentialhabitableexoplanetsnow