NASA - 41 New Transiting Planets in Kepler Field of View

[Cyberman]

I read somewhere that we might have telescopes powerful enough in 50 years to actually see these planets in detail.

There is a technique for doing this, but the technology is a fair way off yet I think; certainly greater than fifty years. Basically it involves gravitational lensing, the fact that high concentrations of gravity warp space so as to act like an optical lens; applying this fact to nearby galaxies, astronomers have already been able to image and photograph galaxies literally on the other side of the Universe. There are problems involving multiple images of these distant galaxies which can require correction and processing if it's considered necessary, but the principle is sound.

Like any lens, a gravtational lens has a focal point at which the magnified image is brought into sharp focus. Now, if we could place a powerful space telescope in a stable orbit right at our Sun's focal point, some 550 AU (550 times the average Earth-Sun distance) out, it could be possible to use the whole Solar System as a vast refracting telescope with the Sun as its lens. I've read articles which talk about being able to resolve exoplanets many lightyears away in such detail as to be able to see objects on their surface. I don't know about that so much, but the resolving powers of the technique would indeed be awesome, and as advanced over our current telescope technology as the first telescope would have been over the original basic light-detecting cells that eventually evolved into eyes.

Combine that with the intereferometry technique, using two or - ideally - many more space telescopes placed in strategic orbits at the Sun's focal point (which would form a sphere around the Sun at the appropriate distance, of course) and the direct imaging powers at our disposal would become almost god-like.