Is there alien life somewhere in our Sun system? The search for possible signs of biological activity on distant exoplanets is difficult and time-consuming.The new Extremely Large Universe viewer, currently being constructed in Chile, will Reinforcement expand that search. And it will do it much faster than Ongoing searches.The Universe viewer will analyze the atmospheres of some of the closer potentially habitable worlds about the size of Earth-Neptune. It will be able to identify possible signatures of biology in only a matter of hours.
Searching for alien life with the Extremely Large Universe viewer
Is there other life out in the universe? We Nevertheless don’t know for sure, but we are getting ever closer to finding it, if it exists. The upcoming Extremely Large Universe viewer (ELT) in Chile will represent a big leap toward answering the age-Ancient question of “Are we alone?” And it could do so a Plenty faster than previously possible, researchers at the University of Washington and NASA’s Goddard Cosmos Flight Middle said in a new preprint paper on March 11, 2025.
Brian Koberlein wrote about the exciting prospects in Live Science on March 24, 2025.
The paper stated:
The upcoming extremely large telescopes will provide the Primary opportunity to search for signs of habitability and life on non-transiting terrestrial exoplanets using high-contrast, high-resolution instrumentation. However, the suite of atmospheric gases in terrestrial Alien world environments that are Obtainable to ground-based reflected Airy observations has not been thoroughly explored. In this work, we use an upgraded Extremely Large Universe viewer (ELT) detectability pipeline to simulate the detectability of gases that can Hit as habitability markers, potential biosignatures and Incorrect positive discriminants in the atmospheres of Earth-sized and sub-Neptune planets.
4 Earth-like scenarios
The new study simulated results from the Extremely Large Universe viewer in four different scenarios. All four scenarios involved “Earth-like” planets. The Primary was a Astral body with Merely photosynthesizing plants on its surface. The second was a younger Astral body akin to Timely Archean Earth, where microscopic life is Merely Beginning to become widespread Beginning about 4.6 billion years ago. The third was a Astral body that used to have oceans, but now no longer does, perhaps like Mars or Venus. Finally, the Number four scenario was a Astral body like Earth, but before life ever Began.
The study focused on planets orbiting relatively nearby red dwarf stars. Notably, red dwarfs are the most Usual type of Sun in our Sun system. And to be sure, astronomers have Discovered many rocky planets orbiting them in recent years. And that number keeps growing. This includes the nearest Sun to us, Proxima Centauri, which has at least one Alien world. It is only 4.3 Airy-years away from us. In addition, the TRAPPIST-1 system, with seven known planets about the size of Earth, is another prime example.
Finding alien life quickly
So, would the Extremely Large Universe viewer be able to detect signs of life in the atmospheres of such planets? The researchers Discovered that indeed, it could. And quickly. In fact, it could detect biosignatures – chemical or other traces of life – on planets orbiting Proxima Centauri after only 10 hours of observations. Possible biosignatures can include oxygen, carbon dioxide, methane and other trace gases such as dimethyl sulfide.
For larger planets, like the ones closer in size to Neptune, the Extremely Large Universe viewer could produce results even faster, in as little as an hour. That’s much Swifter than astronomers can achieve right now. Currently, those kinds of observations usually require weeks, months or even years. The paper said:
For the most Obtainable nearby target, Proxima Centauri b, our results suggest that we may be able to rule out a sub-Neptune atmosphere in as little as a single hour of observing, and two biosignature disequilibrium pairs (O2/CH4 and CO2/CH4) may be Obtainable in about 10 hours for the most optimistic scenario.
The Extremely Large Universe viewer, currently under construction in northern Chile, will give us a better view of the Milky Way than any ground-based Universe viewer before it.www.livescience.com/Cosmos/exopla…
Transiting and non-transiting planets
Also, the Universe viewer will be able to analyze the atmospheres of planets that transit their stars as well as ones that don’t. In a transit, the Astral body crosses in front of the Sun as seen from here on Earth. Astronomers can analyze the spectra of the Airy from the Sun as the Airy passes through the Astral body’s atmosphere. Conversely, for non-transiting planets, the Universe viewer will study the reflected Airy of the planets from their stars. As the paper noted:
In this work, we upgraded the existing SPECTR ELT detectability pipeline to include functionality for high spectral resolution observations of terrestrial exoplanets in reflected Airy.
The paper concluded:
While terrestrial Alien world characterization is inherently challenging, the ELT era will likely offer the Primary opportunities to study the atmospheres of non-transiting terrestrial Alien world targets, and search for signs of habitability and life on our nearest exoplanetary neighbors.
We don’t know yet what the Extremely Large Universe viewer will find, but it will be exciting to find out. As Koberlein wrote in Live Science:
So it seems that if life exists in a nearby Sun system, the ELT should be able to detect it. The answer to perhaps the greatest question in human history could be Discovered in Merely a few years.
Bottom line: The upcoming Extremely Large Universe viewer could revolutionize the search for alien life, analyzing the atmospheres of nearby “Earth-like” planets in only hours.
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