Current plans for flagship telescopes in the 2040s are focused on answering a simple question: Are we alone? Our best telescopes to date, such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), have given us only tantalizing glimpses into the atmospheres of other worlds, but not enough to truly determine whether life as we know it exists there. Astronomers have been waiting for technology to catch up to their dreams of what is possible in new types of te…