In Late 2030 We Will Know If There Is Life Or Not On Proxima B!
864Imagine yourself in the breathtaking Atacama Desert of Chile. The air is dry and clear, and the night sky unveils a dazzling display of stars and nebulae, visible to the naked eye. Then, atop the Cerro Armazones, standing tall at 3,046 meters (10,000 feet) above sea level, you notice the pitch-black silhouette of what will become humanity’s largest eye fixed on the cosmos: the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT). The name might sound a bit cartoonish, almost like something from Mel Brooks' “Spaceballs” (remember the scene with “Ludicrous Speed”?), but it actually belongs to a colossal machine that is set to unlock incredible mysteries about our universe.
Here’s a little-known fact: despite its massive proportions, the ELT is, in a way, a compromise. Back in the fall of 2005, a panel of experts convened to assess the feasibility of the OWL - an acronym for OverWhelmingly Large Telescope. And what a groundbreaking project it was! With a primary mirror spanning 100 meters (328 feet) in diameter, divided into 3,048 segments, OWL promised a resolution of 0.0005 seconds of arc - 40 times sharper than the best resolutions achieved by the Hubble Space Telescope. But such a monstrous creation posed not only engineering challenges but insurmountable economic ones, which the committee ultimately decided to forgo. At an estimated cost of €1.2 billion two decades ago, the price tag was deemed far too steep.
In response, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) shifted its focus to the ELT - still an ambitious endeavor but one deemed technically and financially more viable. Even so, it will still stand as the world’s largest telescope, offering the scientific community unprecedented opportunities for exploration. In short, while the ESO abandoned the “overwhelmingly large” concept, they settled for a telescope that’s simply “extremely large” - an acceptable trade-off.
But the real headline is something else entirely: a recent study reviewed the ELT’s technical parameters and simulated an observation of the atmosphere of the exoplanet Proxima b. The results? Once the ELT becomes fully operational, expected around 2029–2030, it will be able to determine within mere hours whether life exists on that distant world.
Curious to find out how it’ll do this? Then keep watching!
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Credits: Ron Miller, Mark A. Garlick / MarkGarlick.com ,Elon Musk/SpaceX/ Flickr
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00:00 Intro
00:01 Elt Telescope Characteristics
2:54 ELT Will Discover Life On Proxima B
7:50 Atacama Desert in Chile
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#insanecuriosity #proximab #elttelescope