A group of astronomers is essay your helper to build a revolutionary new scope that could project the surface of worlds outside our Solar System .
The project to create the telescope , which will be known as the ExoLife Finder ( ELF ) , is being run bythe PLANETS Foundation . The group is seeking $ 35,000 onKickstarterto build a prototype of one part of the telescope . Eventually , it hopes to build a fully fledged scope in the Atacama Desert in Chile .
The prototype part the mathematical group wants your money to construct is call a mirror actuator , which would basically be responsible for moving the scope ’s mirrors . The estimate is to use 16 circular 3-D - print mirror , each 5 meters ( 16 feet ) across , to gather light from distant solar systems .
Once finished , the telescope would have a diam of 25 meters ( 82 feet ) , making it tender enough to image exoplanets within 25 light-colored - twelvemonth of Earth . The first target would beProxima b , a satellite orbiting our nearest virtuoso , Proxima Centauri , 4.2 light - year away .
“ The ExoLife Finder … will be the human beings ’s first and only telescope capable of imaging oceans , continents , and life history on nearby exoplanets , ” The PLANETS Foundation wrote on its Kickstarter page .
“ ELF is designed for find the vigor signature of life or life history ’s likely chemical fingerprints in the air from water , oxygen , methane , and ozone , or on the surface from photosynthetic biopigments . ”
The project is currently about halfway to its funding goal , with 18 days provide to go . If successful , the genuine tryout will come next year , when it attempt to seek financial backing for the integral scope – $ 130 million . It ’s undecipherable how they ’ll do this at the moment . It would then take 5 age to build .
A previous endeavor by the PLANETS Foundation to build a telescope had a fewfunding issues . know as The Colossus , this machine would have used 58 separate mirror to search for life , making it the with child optic and infrared telescope in the man . The toll of $ 600 million proved too much to raise , but perhaps the ELF – billed as “ Colossus - lite ” – will do better .
The lookup for biography is arguably the hottest area in uranology right now . Whether the desire to find out if we ’re alone is enough to get the novel project up and running remains to be seen . But if the marriage offer is sound , who would n’t want to get ask ?
“ In only a few month after ELF is completed , we will know if there is living on [ Proxima b ] , ” the team write . “ We will discover if we have neighbors , belittled or big . ”
