Tech UPTechnologyNASA plans to use the Sun as a giant...

NASA plans to use the Sun as a giant telescope to see alien life

 

Observing exoplanets directly is a complex matter. A challenge technologically speaking that is impossible for us nowadays. But we could use what we have inside our solar system as a tool so we don’t have to build telescopes with mirrors hundreds of kilometers across. This is where the widely used phenomenon in astronomy known as gravitational lensing comes in.

Gravitational lensing occurs when the gravitational field of a massive object in space warps space and deflects light from a distant object behind it. This results in a bull’s-eye pattern, or “Einstein Ring” that allows us to see what is behind. It was predicted by the famous physicist Albert Einstein in 1915.

 

Solar Gravitational Lens

Our Sun, being the largest object in our solar system, can be used like a telescope lens to achieve incredible magnifications of distant objects. Thus began the Solar Gravitational Lens project.

The project, described in a study that is pending peer review and that we can read on the ArXiv preprint server, increases the chances of finding aliens, if there are any. The Solar Gravitational Lens (SGL) is a NASA project, as part of its Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program, which funded in 2020 an innovative way to scale distant exoplanets up to 100 light-years from Earth using lenses. gravitational.

Since its inception in 2011, NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts has supported many wacky ideas in the fields of astronomy and space exploration. And one of them has just published a white paper describing a mission to get a telescope that can effectively see biosignatures on nearby exoplanets using the gravitational lens of our own Sun.

With $2 million in funding , the document explains the mission concept in more detail and defines what technologies already exist and what would need further development.

challenges

Such a mission could give us enough detail of an exoplanet’s surface to see continents and islands (and perhaps even cities, if they existed) , but like any big ambitious project, it presents many challenges. For the system to work, the solar lens and the rest of the telescope must be 650 times the distance between Earth and the Sun, or 650 astronomical units (AU). It’s a long way. Without going any further , the Voyager 1 space probe itself, the human object that has traveled the furthest from Earth, is “only” 157 astronomical units from the Sun. And the focal point of the Sun’s gravitational lens should be 550- 900 times farther than Earth orbits our star. No spacecraft has ever gone beyond our solar system.

Although the team warned that the mission would have to overcome several technical challenges, it could answer one of humanity’s most fundamental questions: are we alone in the universe?

“Of particular interest is the possibility of using Solar Gravitational Lensing to obtain images with high spatial and spectral resolution of a potentially “living” exoplanet in distant solar systems. High-resolution direct images of exoplanets obtained using SGL can help find signs of their suitability for life”, the scientists explain.

It’s doable, ambitious, interesting and exciting in equal parts, and it could set a before and after in the way we study other worlds beyond Earth. It is worth the wait, even if it is long, until this project can be viable.

Referencia: Henry Helvajian∗, Alan Rosenthal†, John Poklemba‡, Thomas A Battista§,
Marc D. DiPrinzio¶, Jon M. Neff‖, and John P. McVey∗ A mission architecture to reach and operate
at the focal region of the solar gravitational lens 2022 DOI: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2207.03005

 

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