This
groundbreaking telescope would have the ability to see up to 120 Trillion miles
into outer space and discover life beyond Earth. Dubbed as ELF—which stands for
ExoLife finder—the telescope would search the universe for ‘chemical
fingerprints’ of life on the surface of distant alien worlds. The telescope
would have the capability of snapping images go distant alien continents and
oceans.
The best
part, you can be a part of it. The project is currently on Kickstarter raising
funds. Once the telescope is constructed, it will start searching the cosmos
with one main goal: Finding alien life, whether it’s small or big.
In order to
do so, it will start off by exploring its first target—an alien world located
in the Proxima Centauri system dubbed as Proxima B thought to orbit its host
star within its habitable zone. This star system is our closest neighbor
located around 4.2 light-years away.
This massive
alien hunting telescope will be composed of sixteen 5-meter mirrors, based on
printed mirror technology according to reports from the Planets Foundation.
Once finished, the telescope is expected to be 25 meters wide and will be
located in the Atacama Desert in Chile.
According to
initial reports, the ELF telescope would have the ability to explore distant
alien worlds located within 25 light-years from our sun. Most excitingly
perhaps, it will have the ability to explore the nearby Alpha Centauri System.
Alpha Centauri is of great interest for Astronomers.
Once the ELF
telescope is finished, experts plant to search the neighboring star system and
its possible planets for evidence of life as we know it. Experts will use the
telescope to sniff out energy signatures of life in its atmosphere, as well as
search the planets’ atmosphere and detected water, oxygen, methane as well as
ozone.
However,
astronomers note how their revolutionary telescope could even detect
photosynthetic organisms or even traces of thermal waste at the surface of the
planets from advanced alien civilizations.
Dr. Svetlana
Berdyugina, Director of the Kipenheuer Institute for Solar Physics and Planets
Foundation, as well as the co-founder, said:
“We aim to find life on nearby planets outside the solar system, also known as exoplanets. We have designed a revolutionary telescope with a number of metamaterials, making our mirrors incredibly light and also reducing the cost of our telescopes by a factor of 10. Our powerful new telescope ExoLife Finder, or ELF, will be able to see planets up to 120 trillion miles away, and will image oceans, continents, and life on exoplanets.”
Currently,
the team behind the project has raised around $17,000 toward their initial goal
of $35,000. They hope to meet their initial goal by October 2017.
$35,000
isn’t the price for the telescope.
Telescope
Summary:
Total Cost:
$130 million USD
Time To
Build: 60 months
Planned
Location: Atacama Desert, Chile
You can find
out more about the telescope by visiting their Kickstarter page, and
planets.life
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