BRUSSELS: The upcoming European Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) is positioned to be the leading instrument in the quest to discover aliens on potentially habitable exoplanets within the next 20 years, according to a recent study.
The ELT, with its advanced capabilities, is expected to provide astronomers with a crucial tool to study rocky worlds orbiting other stars, such as Proxima Centauri b, that hold the tantalizing possibility of hosting alien life.
The study focused on modelling the conditions necessary to characterize planets beyond our solar system, aiming to identify key targets for exploration in the 2030s and beyond. Researchers highlighted the significance of examining the atmospheres of exoplanetary worlds to gather valuable insights, alongside assessing fundamental properties like mass, radius, and orbital period.
Search for Alien Life
Instruments like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) employ transit spectroscopy to analyze exoplanetary atmospheres. During a transit, where a planet passes in front of its host star from the telescope’s perspective, part of the star’s light traverses the planet’s atmosphere. The absorption of starlight by molecules in the atmosphere at different wavelengths allows scientists to identify distinct molecular imprints, revealing valuable information about the composition of the exoplanet’s atmosphere.
While several exoplanets have been observed, including HD 950086b, they predominantly consist of massive, young worlds with strong ultraviolet light emissions. These planets, located far from their parent stars, pose challenges in observation due to their invisibility to the naked eye. The ELT’s large hole and advanced capabilities are crucial for achieving a high signal-to-noise ratio, enabling astronomers to extract detailed spectral characteristics from the faint light patterns of these distant worlds.
