New ET detection method leads to quest for world's largest telescope
An artist's rendition of the Calotte design, a revolutionary advance in
telescope structure technology. (Credit: Dynamic Structures Ltd.)
Until
recently, one of the ultimate mysteries of the universe -- how many
civilizations may exist on planets orbiting other stars in the Milky Way
Galaxy -- relied on the possibility of detecting intelligent beings by
radio signals. Now a team of astronomers, engineers, and physicists from
the University of Hawaii, the University of Freiburg, and elsewhere has
proposed a new and powerful technique to search for intelligent life.
The revolutionary method is described by four of the team's astronomers in the June 2013 issue of Astronomy magazine, the world's largest magazine on the subject, with a print and web readership of half a million each month.
The story, "How to Find ET with Infrared Light," was written by Jeff R. Kuhn of the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy, Svetlana V. Berdyugina of the University of Freiburg and the Kiepenheuer Institute for Solar Physics in Germany, David Halliday of Dynamic Structures, Ltd., in British Columbia, and Caisey Harlingten of the Searchlight Observatory Network in The Grange, Norwich, England.
The revolutionary method is described by four of the team's astronomers in the June 2013 issue of Astronomy magazine, the world's largest magazine on the subject, with a print and web readership of half a million each month.
The story, "How to Find ET with Infrared Light," was written by Jeff R. Kuhn of the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy, Svetlana V. Berdyugina of the University of Freiburg and the Kiepenheuer Institute for Solar Physics in Germany, David Halliday of Dynamic Structures, Ltd., in British Columbia, and Caisey Harlingten of the Searchlight Observatory Network in The Grange, Norwich, England.
Rather
than looking for radio waves, the team suggests searching for the heat
signatures of nearby planets, which requires a giant telescope that
could detect infrared radiation directly from an exoplanet, thus
revealing the presence of a civilization.
"The
energy footprint of life and civilization appears as infrared heat
radiation," says Kuhn, the project's lead scientist. "A convenient way
to describe the strength of this signal is in terms of total stellar
power that is incident on the host planet." The technique arises from
the fact that a civilization produces power that adds to the heat on a
planet, beyond the heat received from its host star. A large enough
telescope, idealized for infrared detection, could survey planets
orbiting stars within 60 light-years of the Sun to see whether or not
they host civilizations.
THE COLOSSUS TELESCOPE
The
quest for direct infrared detection of extraterrestrial civilizations,
along with many other research possibilities, has led the team to the
funding and building of a giant telescope. Currently planned large
infrared telescopes, the Giant Magellan Telescope, the Thirty Meter
Telescope, and the European Extremely Large Telescope, would not be
large enough.
Instead,
a telescope (dubbed Colossus) with a primary mirror about 250 feet (77
meters) in diameter could find hundreds of Earth-sized or larger planets
in habitable zones, and perhaps dozens of extraterrestrial
civilizations, by using a sensitive coronagraph - and the technology to
build such an instrument exists.
The
international team thus seeks funding to build a 77-m telescope, which
would be constructed from revolutionary thin-mirror slumping and
polishing technologies developed by the Innovative Optics team. The
telescope would consist of approximately sixty 8-m mirror segments, and
would operate at a high-altitude site.
Colossus's
field of view would be optimized for star-like sources. It would be the
world's best high-resolution infrared telescope and would excel at the
study of stellar surfaces, black holes, and quasars, objects that appear
smaller than 1 arc-second on the sky.
INNOVATIVE OPTICS, LTD.
The organization behind the technologies that make Colossus style telescopes possible is Innovative Optics Ltd. (IO). IO (www.innovativeoptics.ca)
operates its research and development at the University of Hawaii's
Institute for Astronomy in Maui, and at the National University of
Mexico in Ensenada, Mexico. IO also has developmental operations at the
Vancouver, B.C., Canada location of Dynamic Structures Ltd.
For
decades, Dynamic Structures Ltd. (dynamicstructuresltd.com) has been
the leader in both design and construction of the world's largest
telescopes and telescope enclosures. These include the
Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope and enclosure, Hawaii; the Sir Isaac
Newton Telescope and enclosure, La Palma, Canary Islands; the Sir
William Herschel Telescope and enclosure, La Palma, Canary Islands; both
W. M. Keck Observatories, Phase 1 and 2, Mauna Kea, Hawaii; the Owens
Valley Radio Observatory and support structures, California; the Gemini
8-meter Telescope Projects in both Hawaii and Chile; and the Atacama
Cosmology Telescope in Chile.
Dynamic
Structures Ltd. has also been retained by the Thirty Meter Telescope
Corporation (TMT) to provide a solution for the TMT enclosure. This has
just been completed, resulting in the "Calotte" design. This design
allows for significantly reducing the mass and size of the telescope's
enclosure compared with conventional carousel and dome-type structures.
Dynamic
Structures Ltd. is an investment partner in IO and lends its
engineering, fabrication and support infrastructure to IO for a joint
effort in creating a revolution in astronomical capabilities.
With
manageable fabrication timescales, both optical and mechanical, and
cost effective pricing, IO technologies will enable the realization of
telescopes of unprecedented size and capability.
Sources: Astronomy Magazine, Searchlight Observatory Network.
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