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
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