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New way to detect alien life discovered


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The powerful new model can help detect life on extrasolar planets more effectively than ever before.

Developed by researchers from the University College London, the technique works by analyzing the absorption of different colored light by an extrasolar planet's atmosphere and then comparing it to a predetermined spectrum to find out which molecules may be present there.

Read More: http://www.unexplain...life-discovered

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This will be interesting!

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Yes this is quite interesting. Maybe if we find alien life somewhere we can send all of our politicians there. Lawyers too. Then the other world will know there's no intelligent life here.

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Yes this is quite interesting. Maybe if we find alien life somewhere we can send all of our politicians there. Lawyers too. Then the other world will know there's no intelligent life here.

One should not let lawyers and politicians give the whole human race a bad name. But I see your point!

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So now humanity is sniffing for ET farts?

However, this is a fascinating new model and I am excited to see where it goes over the next 10 years.

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Sure beats the lame Dyson Sphere proposal.

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An interesting project and one I hope yields great results. Just one extra little analytical tool we can use as we glance across the endless expanse towards the myriad of distant twinkling points in the sky and wonder if we are alone!

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I think scientists should build a very powerful telescope that can see everything/anything on the surface of other planets. Just avoid suns/stars

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Very interesting, i'll be waiting to hear what results the new methods garnish over time. Never know, they might find Jabba the Hutt out there somewhere!

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you can come out any new method u can think off ,since no one can proof whether it work or not

"I don't understand science" would have been quicker to type.

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I think scientists should build a very powerful telescope that can see everything/anything on the surface of other planets. Just avoid suns/stars

Such a telescope is well beyond current abilities (and way, WAY beyond current budgetary constraints).

There are several huge new telescopes under construction, including the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). This will have a primary mirror 40 metres (131.2 ft)across. To give you some idea of how telescopes have progressed, when I first got interested in Astronomy a little over 40 years ago the largest telescope in the world had a primary mirror just 200 inches across.

Because of the E-ELT's enormous size this behemoth will be able to see Earth like planets around stars but it will still not be capable of making out surface details

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...

There are several huge new telescopes under construction, including the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). This will have a primary mirror 40 metres (131.2 ft)across. To give you some idea of how telescopes have progressed, when I first got interested in Astronomy a little over 40 years ago the largest telescope in the world had a primary mirror just 200 inches across.

...

Lets see... 200 inches x 1 foot / 12 inches = 200 / 12 feet = 16.67 feet

131.2 feet /16.67 feet = 1 : 8 ratio

The size doubled every 10 years!

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Lets see... 200 inches x 1 foot / 12 inches = 200 / 12 feet = 16.67 feet

131.2 feet /16.67 feet = 1 : 8 ratio

The size doubled every 10 years!

Amazing, in 50 yrs we will be looking through telescopes over a kilometre wide! We could spy on ET from the comfort of home! :tu:

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The size doubled every 10 years!

Not really.

Firstly telescope sizes tend to take quantum leaps with new technology rather than increasing in size steadily.

The Hale 200 in telescope was the largest telescope in the world from 1948 until 1975 when the Russians built a larger but not very successful 6m (238 in) telescope.

Advances in technology meant that 15 telescopes with primary mirrors between 6 and 10 m were built between 1993 and 2002. The Keck 1 was the first of these new generation telescopes and with a 10m primary was the largest. In 1998 the identical Keck 2 was built and these remained the largest telescopes in the world until the 10.4m Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) was completed in 2009.

So from 1948 until 2009 telescope sizes only doubled and from 1948 until 1993 they only grew with a ratio of 1:1.19

Part of the reason for the stagnation was that these telescopes were as big as it was possible to build. Large mirrors were made from single pieces of glass. They were very heavy and tended to distort under gravity, leading to a degradation of the image (this is the reason that the Russian 6m telescope was less than successful).

A second reason for the stagnation was the advancement of CCD technology over photographic plates. As CCD advanced they captured more and more light making the existing telescopes more and more efficient. There was actually no need to build new telescopes as the old ones were being improved dramatically. CDD's are now so efficient that improvements have slowed down. To get better images it once more requires bigger telescopes.

When computer technology advanced in the '80's and 90's it became possible to build much thinner and lighter mirrors and use computer control to flex them so as to counteract the effect of gravity. This means that bigger mirrors can be built but also that the support structure can also be lighter and cheaper. It also enabled more complex shapes of mirror to be manufactured. Instead of needing to be made of a single huge piece of glass mirrors could be made of smaller segments. This is what lead to the sudden increase in telescope sizes starting in 1993.

Now those technological advances are being pushed to their limit. The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) will have seven 8.4 mirrors giving it a combined aperture of 24.5m. The Thirty Meter Telescope will (as it's name suggests) have a segmented 30 m mirror. The E-ELT will have a segmented 39.3 m mirror.

Such large telescopes take a lot of money and a long time to build. The GMT will not be complete until 2020 and the TMT and E-ELT will be complete in 2022. The current largest telescope, the GTC, cost €130 million, the E-ELT will cost €1.055 billion.

With these huge telescopes taking so long to build and costing so much it is likely to be a while before another breakthrough occurs that enables telescopes to make another quantum leap forward in size.

Amazing, in 50 yrs we will be looking through telescopes over a kilometre wide!

No we won't, see above.

We could spy on ET from the comfort of home! :tu:

No we couldn't.

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Such a telescope is well beyond current abilities (and way, WAY beyond current budgetary constraints).

There are several huge new telescopes under construction, including the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). This will have a primary mirror 40 metres (131.2 ft)across. To give you some idea of how telescopes have progressed, when I first got interested in Astronomy a little over 40 years ago the largest telescope in the world had a primary mirror just 200 inches across.

Because of the E-ELT's enormous size this behemoth will be able to see Earth like planets around stars but it will still not be capable of making out surface details

Thats cool cant wait for technology to catch up

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