What if we glimpsed alien life for the first time by peering through a natural telescope made by the Sun's gravity? This wild idea, known as a solar gravitational lens (SGL) mission, may sound like an Einsteinian fever dream, but scientists have now found that it is "feasible with technologies that are either extant or in active development," according to a new study.

An SGL mission could zoom in to see surface features of exoplanets, on scales of just tens of miles, which could provide smoking-gun evidence of extraterrestrial life. It's no wonder, then, that scientists have speculated about a potential SGL mission for decades; in 2020, NASA funded an investigation into the feasibility of the mission as part of its Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program.