A new space mission is underway to search for potentially habitable planets around Earth’s closest neighboring star system.
In a project that echoes the 2009 film Avatar, an international collaboration of scientists in Australia and the United States will search the Alpha Centauri star system for an Earth-like planet that could sustain life.
Alpha Centauri – the closest neighboring star system to Earth – consists of two Sun-like stars, known as Alpha Centauri A and B, and a more distant red dwarf.
The Toliman mission, named after an ancient star system of Arabic origin, will search for potential planets orbiting Alpha Centauri A and B.
The Toliman telescope, which is under construction, is scheduled to be launched into low-Earth orbit in 2023. It seeks to find new planets in the “Goldilocks orbit” – at a suitable distance, so that the planet is neither too hot nor too cold to support life.
Project leader Professor Peter Tuthill, from the University of Sydney, said: ‘If we are looking for life as we know it, the gold standard is usually a planet where liquid water can be present on a planet’s surface – so no. frozen snowball, doesn’t boil all the water in the atmosphere.”
“We know that life evolved at least once, around sun-like stars on Earth-like planets,” Tuthill said. “We’re trying to find another example that’s as close to this formation as possible.”
Tuthill likened the search for planets to solving a mystery: The signals emitted by the planets were “very subtle” and “very faint” compared to signals coming from the stars, he said.
Although it seems often found outer planet – Planets outside our solar system – “As for our closest Sun-like stars, we don’t know if there might be… Earth-like planets,” said Tuthill.
The Toliman mission will try to detect planets by studying whether the stars Alpha Centauri A and B sway from side to side, due to the presence of an invisible planet pulling on them by gravity.
previously found mission collaborators”Filter planetIt could potentially orbit Alpha Centauri A, but its existence has not been conclusively confirmed.
Subscribe to receive the hottest news from Guardian Australia every morning
–
“If this were a real planet, it would be like a Neptune-like planet … a gas giant,” Tuthill said. “Perhaps in the vicinity there is a moon where life can exist.”
This possibility has a science fiction parallel: the 2009 James Cameron film, symbol image, on Pandora, a fictional habitable moon orbiting the gas giant in the Alpha Centauri system.
“If the discovery is confirmed, James Cameron will get there first with the film,” said Tuthill.
Tuthill added that at 4.37 light-years from the sun, Alpha Centauri will be an obvious destination for future interstellar travel.
However, a “big leap in technology” will be required to get there. “About as fast as a modern spacecraft, it’s like a 100,000-year journey.”
“This is not in my life, but it is still a visionary future where we can imagine developing technology… capable of covering this interstellar void.”
In collaboration with the University of Sydney, the Toliman mission includes scientists at Saber Astronautics in Australia, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Breakthrough Initiatives in the United States.
“This is probably the largest privately funded space telescope,” said Tuthill.
–
