Astronomers in Chile seek extraterrestrial life and ‘dark energy’ with telescope

In Chile’s arid Atacama Desert, astronomers are scouring starry night skies for life on other planets and studying so-called “dark energy,” a mysterious cosmic force believed to drive the universe’s accelerated expansion.

Essential in the race to examine distant worlds is the Giant Magellanic Telescope (known by its acronym GMT), a $1.8 billion (about R$10.2 billion) complex being built at the Las Campanas observatory in Chile, and which will have a resolution 10 times that of the Hubble Space Telescope.

The telescope, which is due to go into operation by the end of the decade, will compete with the European Southern Observatory’s Extremely Large Telescope, located further north in the same desert, as well as the Thirty-Meter Telescope (TMT), which is currently in operation. being built in Hawaii.

“This new generation of giant telescopes aims to precisely detect life on other planets and determine the source of dark energy,” said Leopoldo Infante, director of the Las Campanas observatory.

“It’s a race of these three groups to see who sees first and who makes the first discovery.”

Infante said the new giant telescope could detect organic molecules in the atmosphere of distant planets.

“That’s the expectation,” he said. “And whoever detects life on another planet will win the Nobel Prize, I guarantee.”

The other prize is the study of dark energy, which is not the same as the enigmatic dark matter, considered a property of space and which drives the accelerated expansion of the universe. It constitutes a large part of the universe, but it remains largely an unsolved mystery.

“There is an energy that makes the universe expand, and it also accelerates this expansion,” said Infante, adding that scientists knew that this energy must exist, although they did not understand its origin.

“Therefore, this telescope was designed to be able to precisely study what is called the dark energy of the universe, to be able to physically understand what it is and where it comes from.”

Translated text. Read the original in Spanish.