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I know I have talked a big game about our “Who is government?” series illuminating the work of civil servants from the far reaches of the observable bureaucracy.

But this one — this one — promises the discovery of extraterrestrial life.

“In more than a dozen conversations with some of the best minds in astrophysics” at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Calif., chronicler Dave Eggers writes, “I did not meet anyone who was doubtful about finding evidence of life elsewhere — most likely on an exoplanet beyond our solar system. It was not a matter of if. It was a matter of when.”

The lab, which specializes in uncrewed satellites, explorers and rovers, is known as “Disneyland for nerds,” Eggers reports, and, Jiminy Cricket, are the nerds impressive; unlike the previous entries in this series, Eggers’s report profiles a whole team of employees, whose job titles on the JPL website are things such as “Structure of the Universe” and “Origin of the Universe.”

Eggers also explains some of the tech being worked on at the JPL, including how something called a coronagraph works (“starlight suppression,” obviously) and how something called a Starshade could work.

Most tantalizingly, he reveals just how close we........

© Washington Post