An ambitious project for seeking out more Earth-like planet has initiated. A consortium of private players has launched an ambitious project to build a space telescope which will be then pointed towards the Alpha Centauri in hope of getting a glimpse of planets where life has gained a foothold. It is the latest venture to find planets where life could have got a foothold.
Project Blue is the name of the project which aims to construct a space telescope of the size of a washing machine and then point it towards the nearest star system to Earth, the Alpha Centauri in search of a rocky world where life cold has a chance of existence.
However, there are skeptics who contend that even if the project is successful there is no guarantee that it will produce a picture much akin to the “PALE DOT” picture which was sent by Voyager 1 probe when it looked back at Earth as it left the solar system billions of miles away. The picture was taken at the insistence of renowned space astronomer Carl Sagan who said that even a dot has enormous significance since it represents the world where Billions of intelligent living forms are living. In his words “Every saint or sinner has lived on this blue speck of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”
More than 3000 exoplanets have been found in the profound and unending cosmos by astronomers since the 1980’s. However, most of these worlds are known by the wobbly they create on the parent star when they move in front of them. The movement causes a minuscule dip in light as these planets transverse around their parent star. No one has been able to catch a direct picture of such distant images.
The latest Project Blue will work on NASA’s Kepler space telescope which is spotting distant planets orbiting distant stars in distant galaxies. These planets reside within the Goldi Locks or the habitable zone where there is a possibility of water to exist in a liquid state which is believed as the biggest requisite for the existence of life.