Finding “Earth 2.0” may be easier using a new telescope shape

Earth supports the only known life in the universe, all of which depends heavily on the presence of liquid water to facilitate chemical reactions. While a single cell life was present as long as the Earth itself was almost, it took nearly three billion years until a multi -cell life was formed. Human life existed for less than 10 thousand of the era of earth.

All this indicates that life may be common on planets that support liquid water, but it may be uncommon to find a life that studies the universe and seeks to travel through space. To find a life outside the planet, it may be necessary for us to travel to it.

However, the breadth of space, as well as the impossibility of traveling or communicating faster than the speed of light, sets practical limits in the extent we can roam.

The closest stars can be visited only to the sun in a human life, even by the space probe. In addition, the similar stars in the size and the temperature of the sun are only long -term, and it has a stable atmosphere enough for a multi -cell life to be the time to form it.

For this reason, the most valuable stars for study are the stars that resemble the sixty or so -like sun and are closer to us than about 30 light years. The most promising planets will have to spin these stars sizes and temperatures similar to Earth, so there can be solid ground and liquid water.

Strip

The monitoring of the Earth -like external planets is a great challenge around the star. Even in the best possible scenario, the star is one million times brighter than the planet; If the two are not clear together, there is no hope to discover the planet.

Optical theory says that the best accuracy can get in the telescope images depends on the size of the telescope and the wavelength of the observable light.

Planets with liquid water give most of the light in wavelengths about 10 microns (a thin human hair width and 20 times the typical wavelength of visible light). In this wavelength, the telescope needs to collect light at a distance of at least 20 meters to get enough accuracy to separate the Earth from the sun at a distance of 30 years of light.

In addition, the telescope should be in space, because looking at the atmosphere of the Earth will lead to a lot of blurring the image. However, the JMST (JWST) telescope – is only 6.5 meters in diameter, was extremely difficult to launch the telescope.

Since the spread of 20 -meter space telescope appears out of current technology, scientists have discovered many alternative methods.

One of them includes the launch of multiple smaller telescopes that maintain very accurate distances between them, so that the entire group works as one telescope with a large diameter. However, maintaining the accuracy of the required spacecraft (which must be carefully met with the size of a typical molecule) is currently not possible.

Other suggestions use shorter wavelength light, so a smaller telescope can be used. However, in visible light, the star that looks like more than 10 billion times from Earth is. It does not exceed the ability to prevent enough stars to be able to see the planet in this case, even if the image is of high accuracy enough.

One of the ideas of blocking stars includes stars flying a spacecraft called “stars” that increase tens of meters through, at a distance of tens of thousands of miles in front of the space telescope, so that the light prevents exactly from the stars while the light from a accompanying planet has not been banned.

However, this plan requires the launch of a spacecraft (telescope and starshade). Moreover, the reference to the telescope in different stars may require stirring of stars thousands of miles away, using large quantities of fuel prohibited.

Rectangle

in paper Appear Borders in astronomy and space science Astronomical physicists suggest a more feasible alternative.

They show that it is possible to find near -Earth -like planets around the sun’s -like stars with a telescope that has almost the same JWST, as it works in the same wavelength of infrared (10 Micro) like JWST, with a mirror with one rectangle to 20 meters instead of a circle of 6.5 meters.

With a mirror of this shape and size, they can separate a result from the outer planets in the direction of the length of the telescope mirror 20 meters. To find external planets anywhere around the star, the mirror can be rotated so that its long axis corresponds to the star and the planet.

The team explains that this design can find in principle half of all the Earth -like planets that revolve around the sun -like stars within 30 light years in less than three years. Although the design will need more engineering and improvement before ensuring its capabilities, there are no clear requirements that need intense technological development, as for other leading ideas.

If there is about an Earth -like planet revolving around the medium star that looks like a sun, we will find about 30 promising planets. The study of following these planets can identify those who have an atmosphere indicating the presence of life, for example, oxygen, which has been formed through optical representation.

For the most promising candidate, astronomical physicists say, we can send a probe that ultimately expresses pictures of the surface of the planet. The rectangular telescope can provide a direct path towards identifying our sister’s planet, EART 2.0.