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Search for extraterrestrial life puts the spotlight on our closest galactic neighbor

2021-11-24T13:53:37.835Z


A private space telescope could begin detecting planets around the Alpha Centauri star system in 2025, the first step in determining whether life has evolved there.


By Tom Metcalfe -

NBC News

Scientists begin searching for life in our galactic backyard.

The Alpha Centauri star system, two stars that are the closest to our solar system at just over four light years (about 25 trillion miles), are the center of a new focus for finding planets that may reveal signs of life.

The project focuses on the construction of a small space telescope - nicknamed TOLIMAN after the medieval name of the star - that will enter the orbit of the Earth in about two years and could begin to detect planets by 2025.

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Although Alpha Centauri is right next door in astronomical terms, no planets have been detected around its binary star system.

If any are found, their atmospheres could be scanned for the "biosignatures" created by extraterrestrial life, a relatively new astronomical technique that could allow scientists to determine by telescope if there is extraterrestrial life, especially microbial, on distant planets.


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More than 4,000 extraterrestrial planets have already been confirmed, but they have been discovered largely thanks to lucky alignments, explained project director Peter Tuthill, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Sydney. 

“There is a dark little secret that astronomers have been keeping.

We're not really very good at finding planets, "he said.

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Most "exoplanets," as they are known, have been discovered by automated systems such as the Kepler space telescope, which continually monitors planets that intersect in front of hundreds of thousands of stars.

Astronomers have kept a dark secret.

We are not very good at finding planets. "

Peter tuthill

But finding planets around a particular star system - like Alpha Centauri - is much more difficult.

To enhance its capabilities, the new space telescope will feature a specially etched mirror to create what is known as the "diffractive pupil" effect, which diffuses incoming starlight from a tiny point to a much larger, flower-shaped pattern. , which can better reveal any of the very slight "wobbles" caused by the gravity of orbiting planets.

The Alpha Centauri system has two sun-like stars, orbiting each other at a distance about 20 times the distance between the sun and Earth, Tuthill explained.

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Each of them has its own Goldilocks Zone, where rocky planets have just the right temperature to have liquid water on their surfaces, which is believed to be necessary for life, as we know it, to evolve.

In 2016, two planets were discovered around what could be a third star in the system: the red dwarf Proxima Centauri, discovered by the telescope in 1915 and slightly closer to us than the other two.

Alfa and Beta Centauri, photographed from Atacama Lodge, Chile, in March 2010 Alan Dyer / VW PICS / Universal Images Group via Getty Images

But they are not believed to be fit for life because Proxima emits dramatic flares that can be 100 times more powerful than the sun, Tuthill said.

This means that the sun-like stars of Alpha Centauri may be our best bet for locating signs of extraterrestrial life.

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“If we found a land-mass planet in the habitable zones there, that would constitute a Holy Grail: a true analog of Earth.

It would be an environment that could have all the same conditions that we know here on Earth, "he said.

The TOLIMAN project is supported by Breakthrough Initiatives, a California-based space exploration fund.

The group has proposed exploring Alpha Centauri with Breakthrough Starshot, a project consisting of thousands of tiny space probes that can be propelled at very high speed by lasers on Earth.

In theory, the Breakthrough Starshot “nanoship” [a project developing a fleet of solar sail-powered micro-spacecraft (known as StarChip)] could reach Alpha Centauri in about 20 years, an epic 25-billion-mile journey that would take dozens thousands of years with the fastest spacecraft that exist today.

"Alpha Centauri is very close, so if people want to dream of interstellar flight one day, then this star system has to be our first stop on the way to the galaxy," Tuthill noted.

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If the TOLIMAN telescope finds a planet, the next step will be to study it with other telescopes to determine the composition of their atmospheres and, perhaps, even find chemical "biosignatures" produced by life.

The latest astronomical techniques to study the atmospheres of exoplanets only work well with very large planets orbiting close to their star, and studying the atmospheres of Earth-sized planets is out of their reach, explained astrophysicist Chris Watson, from Queen's University of Belfast, Northern Ireland.

However, chemicals are being discovered on smaller, "challenging" planets as scientists find new ways to analyze their data and as new instruments, such as the James Webb Space Telescope, become available.

Watson, who is not involved in the TOLIMAN project, is part of a team that recently detected hydroxyl radicals - a component of water - in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting a star about 400 light years from Earth.

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Detecting chemicals and possibly biosignatures on Earth-like planets around Alpha Centauri stars will be difficult, but “observing the closest and brightest planetary system will provide us with the most likely path to success. ", he claimed.

"The signals will be very weak, so we will need every photon of light to make it work." 

Source: telemundo

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