A huge telescope in Chile is going to be modified so that it can look for aliens.
The European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope will be altered so that it can better look for potentially inhabitable and inhabited planets in Alpha Centauri, the star system that is closest to Earth.
The modifications are part of a deal between the ESO and Breakthrough Starshot, a huge venture that eventually hopes to send tiny spacecraft deep into space, among other projects.
Starshot, which is backed by internet billionaire Yuri Milner and physicist Stephen Hawking, will provide funding to allow equipment on the Very Large Telescope that studies in the mid-infrared to be adapted to better detect faint planets, the ESO said in a statement on Monday.
The adaptation will have the effect of reducing bright stellar light that drowns out relatively dim planets, improving the chances of finding them, it said.
Larger telescopes planned for the 2020s – such as the ESO's own Extremely Large Telescope, current under construction in Chile – should provide researchers with more information on the number and nature of exoplanets.
The ESO is an intergovernmental astronomy organisation backed by 16 countries in Europe and South America and hosted in Chile.
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