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NASA Is Planning To Find Aliens Using Spacetime Warped Around the Sun (vice.com) 182

Posted by BeauHD from the unmatched-capabilities dept.
What if we glimpsed alien life for the first time by peering through a natural telescope made by the Sun's gravity? This wild idea, known as a solar gravitational lens (SGL) mission, may sound like an Einsteinian fever dream, but scientists have now found that it is "feasible with technologies that are either extant or in active development," according to a new study. Motherboard reports: Researchers led by Henry Helvajian, senior scientist in the Physical Sciences Laboratories at the nonprofit research center The Aerospace Corporation, have now shared the initial results of this ongoing NIAC study on the preprint server arxiv, which have not been peer-reviewed. Though the team cautioned that the mission would need to overcome several technical challenges, it could ultimately answer one of humanity's most fundamental questions: Are we alone in the universe?

"The SGL offers capabilities that are unmatched by any planned or conceivable optical instrument," according to the study, which was co-authored by Slava Turyshev, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and principal investigator of the NIAC mission concept. "With its unique optical properties, the SGL can be used to obtain detailed, high resolution images of Earth-like exoplanets as far as 100 light years from Earth, with measurement durations lasting months, or at most a few years." "Of particular interest is the possibility of using the SGL to obtain images of high spatial and spectral resolution of a yet-to-be-identified, potentially life-bearing exoplanet in another solar system in our Galactic neighborhood," the researchers added. "The direct high-resolution images of an exoplanet obtained with the SGL could lead to insight on the on-going biological processes on the target exoplanet and find signs of habitability."

The focal point of the Sun's gravitational lens is located all the way out in interstellar space, some 550 and 900 times the distance that Earth orbits our star, which is much farther than any spacecraft has ventured beyond our planet. Helvajian and his colleagues envision their mission as consisting of a one-meter telescope that is accompanied by a sunshade and propelled by solar sails that produce thrust by capturing solar radiation, in a somewhat analogous fashion to wind-propelled sails. Even if they were able to overcome the technical hurdles involved with this concept -- which include the development of more reliable solar sails and long-duration navigation and communications systems -- the team estimated that it would take at least 25 to 30 years for a spacecraft to reach this far-flung location, in the best case scenario. That said, if a telescope were able to spot alien life, arguably the biggest breakthrough in science, it would be well worth the long wait.
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NASA Is Planning To Find Aliens Using Spacetime Warped Around the Sun More

NASA Is Planning To Find Aliens Using Spacetime Warped Around the Sun

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  • Do it! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Joce640k ( 829181 ) on Thursday July 28, 2022 @02:26AM (#62740510) Homepage

    The discovery of Alien life would be the biggest possible advance for humanity.

    All methods are good.

    • Re:Do it! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by niftydude ( 1745144 ) on Thursday July 28, 2022 @02:45AM (#62740528)
      It's a very long term project.

      30 years to travel out 550 AU to get to the focal point.

      Then at that travel speed at that radius you can orbit the sun in about 95 years to take photos in all directions in the galactic plane.

      Obviously orders of magnitude more if you want to travel to places where you can take images in all solid angle directions.

      Then on top of that, " measurement durations lasting months, or at most a few years", so if you want to take images at 1 degree increments around the 360 degree orbit, or even just images of 300 planets add about another 300 years...

      If it's worth doing, then I'd suggest it's worth making several of these - efficiencies of scale and all that.

      • If the first targets selected were Sun-like stars with Earth-like planets in the Goldilocks zone, it wouldn't have to take quite so long.

        It would be easy enough to go back and choose less likely planets after cherry-picking the "best" ones first.

        • Re:Do it! (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Rei ( 128717 ) on Thursday July 28, 2022 @04:37AM (#62740654) Homepage

          The researchers envision one mission (comprised of multiple spacecraft) to the focal point for each solar system they want to observe.

          There is an alternative, mind you - you don't have to take 95 years to orbit. That's the time that a passive orbit would take, but with active thrust you can slew between targets - and to somewhat out-of-plane targets - much faster. High ISP is critical, of course.

          The advantage to the paper's approach however is that it's not just a "one picture and done" approach; it can continue observing a whole solar system for decades at a time and observe changes over time (such as seasons). It sort of rasterizes its target by tiny adjustments of its position relative the line between the sun and its target; from any arbitrary position it sees an Einstein ring which represents a single pixel on the planet. So by slowly slewing across the target, each observing satellite gets a single scanline. By repeated back and forth, it can make high-resolution imagery - nearly one megapixel for an Earth-sized planet 100ly away.

          (The point of using multiple satellites is (A) faster data collection, and (B) redundancy, since, obviously, there's no repair out at those distances)

          • Re:Do it! (Score:4, Interesting)

            by Rei ( 128717 ) on Thursday July 28, 2022 @04:40AM (#62740662) Homepage

            I think a key point to this however is that such an approach lends itself well to mass production. If - and this is a big IF - they can get such a project funded, and get past the technical challenges - since you want multiple observers for each target, and want to observe multiple targets, it justifies setting up a production line rather than just making one-offs, significantly reducing unit costs. Combine that with the rapid reduction in launch costs and increase in flight rates going on right now, and you have a real winner there.

            *IF* the technical challenges can be overcome. Which will take a long development programme to raise the TRL.

      • If the idea actually worked, you'd launch dozens of the things, so you'd have it all done in 60 years or so.

      • It would not orbit the sun (Score:5, Informative)

        by votsalo ( 5723036 ) on Thursday July 28, 2022 @05:45AM (#62740724)

        30 years to travel out 550 AU to get to the focal point.

        Then at that travel speed at that radius you can orbit the sun in about 95 years to take photos in all directions in the galactic plane.

        Not so. It would continue to travel outward from the Sun, along the line between a single target star and the Sun. It would have about 5 years to lock on the target star (from 550 to 650 AU). At 650 AU it would then move on to find the image of the exoplanet, which it would continue imaging for ~ 10 years. In the given example, the target image would have a diameter of 1300 m. The 1m telescope would image one pixel at a time, and move from pixel to pixel to take a complete image of the target, following the image as it moves.

        There are no major changes of direction planned. That would take too much energy, and it would leave insufficient time for imaging of each target.

        Take a look at the PDF from arxiv.org. It describes the mission in detail. Another interesting point is sending small proto-mission cabable (pMC) spacecraft, very close to the sun, which would then accelerate away from the sun with solar sails to about 1 AU, and then self-assemble into larger mission capable (MC) spacecraft.

        • Thank you for this explanation. As you described it, it sounds a lot more feasible (and what a cool technique!).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        The orbital period at 550 AU is 13000 years, not 95. You really only get to see one thing, so you need to have a really good candidate in mind before you go.

      • >Then at that travel speed at that radius you can orbit the sun in about 95 years to take photos in all directions in the galactic plane.

        To add to the other comments on why that won't be the case:
        - orbital period is proportional to the average distance to the sun raised to the 3/2 power. For the gravitational lensing scope range of 550 to 900 AU that translates to between 13 and 27 thousand years (= average of 0.018 degrees per year).

        - Any ballistic (un-propelled) path around the sun will can only take

    • Frankly, I just don't grasp why it's so damned important that other forms of life are doing whatever other forms of life might do a million light years away a million years ago. It might be amusing or interesting in an abstract way but in our busy planet here we are massively massacring all sorts of other species plus a rather substantial quantity of our own species to see to it that the weapons industry remains profitable, Why? There are so many more interesting things to do that we neglect.
      • Humans are still apes with war-like tribal instincts, and the minute one country stops developing their military another stronger country will steam-roll them.
        • That's a rather fascinating viewpoint in an unstable world where the looming endpoint might well be a sterile radioactive planet. My life is almost over at my extended age but I cannot view a bunch of happy kids with the thought that they might be very lucky to remain alive after the next decade.

        • Humans are still apes with war-like tribal instincts, and the minute one country stops developing their military another stronger country will steam-roll them.

          Problems of "us vs. them". From The Good Place [wikipedia.org], The Snowplow [denofgeek.com] (S3:E3):

          Simone:
          As humans evolved the first big problem we had to overcome was me vs. us – learning to sacrifice a little individual freedom for the benefit of a group. Like sharing food and resources so we don’t starve or get eaten by tigers – things like that.

          The next problem to overcome was us vs. them – trying to see other groups different from ours as equal. That one we’re still struggling with. That’s why we still have racism and nationalism and why fans of Stone Cold Steve Austin hate fans of The Rock.

          I would also argue that many people are still struggling with "me vs. us" ...

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jd ( 1658 )

          There are countries with no military, and countries (like the UK) with no functional military. Nobody is steamrollering the UK. OK, that's because nobody would want to live in a country that has been utterly ruined by the political classes, but that's beside the point.

          • The UK doesn't have enough resources to really be worth invading, and its allies are too powerful to fight anyway. Arguably that's what makes Europe work, none of the countries are big enough to casually roll over any of the others. The bear at the edge of the pitch is the problem.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by noodler ( 724788 )

              The UK doesn't have enough resources to really be worth invading,

              Well, the Brits do have a thriving chips industry!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rei ( 128717 )

        A million light years would be a curiosity.
        A couple dozen light years or less is actually a worthy target to aim for. Will still require a long development path, but it's not a "millions of years in the future" path.
        There's ~60k known stars within 100 light years of the sun.
        And the cost of space exploration is irrelevantly small compared to other things.

        Lastly, people massacring each other has nothing to do with "ensuring that the weapons industry remains profitable". Russia invaded Ukraine to overthrow it

        • I would rather not get involved in the Ukraine tragedy and the murder of innocents on either side but anyone aware of the many years of the previous international actions easily available to anyone really interested would be fully aware that there is a total lack of innocence on both sides. Nevertheless, although I fully agree it is worthwhile to gain information of any kind about the cosmos the arousing of a sense of loneliness about the possibility of life on a distant planet strikes me as extraordinarily

          • I would rather not get involved in the Ukraine tragedy and the murder of innocents on either side

            What? The only innocents being murdered are Ukrainians when Russia launches what's left of its cruise missiles and dips into its converted anti-aircraft missiles and deliberately targets apartments, shopping malls, schools, churches and other institutions.

            the many years of the previous international actions easily available to anyone really interested would be fully aware that there is a total lack of innocence

            • Your resort to rather interesting language is convincing evidence that you have neglected a good deal of easily obtained depth in the history of the current horror with echoes resounding from the whole interactions between governments throughout the twentieth century. Having been born in 1926, my understanding seems to have been somewhat better instructed. That is easily remedied and I suggest it is well worthwhile.

            • The only innocents being murdered are Ukrainians

              How do you know?

              You saw thaton TV?

              No, really. I'd like to know how you know that it's only the Russians who committed atrocities in this... episode.

              Because to.my knowledge there have been reports of people other than Putin that describe atrocities against Russian minorities in Ukraine. For decades. Putin instrumentalised those and, let's assume (which is most likely), inflated those out of proportion. But to my knowledge it's also commonly accepted that he didn't outright invent them.

              Mind I'm not trying to

          • Remind me again how many innocent Russian civilians have been killed by Ukrainians as a result of this conflict?
            • Remind me how many innocent citizens were killed in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Iraq, South East Asia, North Korea, and numerous other countries in South America and Africa if you would like to discuss the nature of war and who was responsible, And soldiers on all sides have died in all these conflicts. And this has been human behavior for thousands of years. And remains so as of now, Perhaps NASA can help out there.
              • We aren't talking about those other conflicts. We are talking about what is happening now. What you're saying is that it is okay to kill people because other people do it.
                • Did I really say that? As someone subject to many typing errors due to old age I make quite a few odd errors, but that one, I simply cannot remember
              • You also didn't answer my question. You're claiming that innocents on both sides are being killed, this is false. Soldiers are not innocent, especially when carrying out orders that are Crimes of War.
                • As a soldier in WWII in the US army air force I never saw action and no doubt I would have had to kill all sorts of people whether or not that was my intention. Millions of innocent civilians were killed as a matter of policy on both sides which was a war crime and that is always true in war. This does not seem to be the proper place to discuss the philosophy involved in that.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by GoTeam ( 5042081 )
                Thanks for your perspective. It's so popular right now to try to be "on the right side of history". It's odd, because the future gets to decide what is the right and wrong side of history, and it is always from the perspective of people living in the future. They don't care what we think is the "right side", and the "right side of history" for a single event can change over time.
                I don't know when schools stopped teaching world history, but it seems we're "doomed to repeat it (mistakes)". We should have neve
                • I don't consider myself particularly cogent in current international relationships and merely indicate what seems obvious to me. The USA seems to me to be over delighted in maintaining its military dominance which is impoverishes the basic needs of the country and offers very little if any real happy results in its current efforts. Each year seems to promise only much worse misery than the previous one and I have neither the brains nor the knowledge to see how to effectively improve prospects. Certainly, k
          • It's rather odd that you claim to be 96, and live in Finland (from other comments), so lived through the Winter War...and yet are advocating allowing Russian territorial expansion because of "previous international actions". This sounds suspiciously like Trumps defense of Putin too. Your not a member of Suomi-Venäjä Seura by any chance, are you? Claiming that this "total lack of innocence" is valid grounds for allowing a country of 40+ million people to be invaded and subjugated seems quite extrem
            • A personal tragedy required my move to Finland which was made possible through my Finnish wife which permitted my quadriplegic three year old son to receive the excellent medical care Finland provides when my Tennessee born son could not be properly cared for as a citizen of New York City. I had no other possible choice and I have no regrets.

      • Frankly, I just don't grasp why it's so damned important that other forms of life are doing whatever other forms of life might do a million light years away a million years ago.

        If nothing else, it would piss off a substantial number of the religiously inclinced. The screaming debates about life elsewhere in the universe as it relates to their little book would be hilarious to watch.

        • You totally underestimate the whole human element of religious faith which has centuries of experience in retaining the adulation of believers who prefer to accept that humanity has a special significance in the cosmos. I have no religious affiliation myself but to presume it is possible to prove the existence or non-existence of some kind of universal intellect is on the naivety level of a rather unsophisticated ten year old child.

          • religious faith which has centuries of experience in retaining the adulation of believers who prefer to accept that humanity has a special significance in the cosmos. I have no religious affiliation myself

            Translation: "I have no idea myself, but I'll happily make up a world view and then declare myself against it."

            Most of Christianity isn't at any kind if odds with aliens. Maybe some crackpots who believe earth is indeed 6k-ish years old. But then again that kind of crackpottery isn't the sole domain of religious people. There are plenty other examples to choose from.

            Also: are you aware that in a world where you can "neither prove nor disprove" the existence of a God adamantly claiming he doesn't exist is...

            • What you seem to be claiming is that to declare ignorance is a faith as strong as to claim to know. I find that most strange. What would I be worshiping`?

    • It wouldn't advance humanity one single bit. Just knowing there is someone out there, doesn't put you in communication with them, it doesn't mean you can pay them a visit. All you'd know is that somewhere out there "the lights are on". In any case, if you did know someone was out there, would it be wise to let them know we're here? I think not.

      • It wouldn't advance humanity one single bit. Just knowing there is someone out there, doesn't put you in communication with them, it doesn't mean you can pay them a visit.

        You don't need to do any of that.

        All you'd know is that somewhere out there "the lights are on".

        That's plenty.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by noodler ( 724788 )

      The discovery of Alien life would be the biggest possible advance for humanity.

      I call bullshit.
      Would it solve global warming? Financial crises? Will it stop the war in Ukraine? Make houses for the homeless? Food and medicine for all?
      How, exactly, do you think it will make the life of earth inhabitants better?

      • Would it solve global warming? Financial crises?

        Possibly. Having a different perspective might finally enable the majority of us to overcome lethargy and beat the fuck out of the sociopatho-crats that make up (most of today's) capitalism, and solve problems as those you describe.

        Will it stop the war in Ukraine?

        Depends. Maybe war, too.

        Make houses for the homeless? Food and medicine for all?

        These are problems mostly solved in most of the industrialised nations, a notable exception being the US. Don't know if knowledge of aliens would help solve them there though. Might help.

        On a more serious note, none of the problems you describe are "real"

  • Oh yeah? (Score:2)

    by jd ( 1658 )

    It's easy to conceive of superior optical instruments. That's not the difficult part. If someone wishes to play the Princess Bride card, then they'll just have to find out that the word doesn't mean what they think it means.

  • With the above said, would it be easier to use Jupiter or some other body to get this concept tested out first, especially if it does not have such long travel times to the focal point?

    Even if the range you can get high res images at drops to 10 LY, it's still something to look at.

    Is there any solar body with a focal point which is closer to Venus / Mars orbit range? Or are all focal bodies "pointed out" away from the centre of the solar system?

    Overall, it looks like an interesting concept, and if the artis

  • Job security for sure (Score:3)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Thursday July 28, 2022 @03:32AM (#62740594)

    ... the team estimated that it would take at least 25 to 30 years for a spacecraft to reach this far-flung location, ...

    In addition to building the thing, I'd say it sounds like a really good job-security project. There are already people who have spent their entire careers working on just the JWST, this would last even longer ...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rei ( 128717 )

      Nobody is going to be jumping straight to this - you have to raise the TRL of very-high-ISP propulsion technologies first. This sort of paper improves the job security of people working on, say, solar sails.

      • This sort of paper improves the job security of people working on, say, solar sails.

        And don't forget the people working on the solar anchors.
        For getting this thing to stop and stay at the correct distance when it gets there.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jd ( 1658 )

      If they want job security, why not construct a multi-module JWST-like telescope that is fully assembled in space? As long as the connectors are such that you can get the pieces connected up with sufficient precision, you could build an effective mirror as large as you like. A segmented mirror 1km in diameter should be sufficient to give the desired quality.

      Of course, nobody is going to actually fund a space telescope of that size, and it's been argued persuasively on Slashdot before that you couldn't build

  • This sounds a lot like the hyperloop... something that in theory could be done, but in practice it's too dang hard and won't be done.

  • Yawn (Score:2)

    by dcw3 ( 649211 )

    Sure, I'm all for space exploration. But until you have some real evidence of aliens, I'm not in favor of spending billions on hunting for them when we have know problems like climate change to deal with.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jd ( 1658 )

      I'd be in favour of any multi-purpose science. So, if you want to do science that hunts for aliens where the science and technology required to do this ALSO lets you fight climate change, solve the healthcare crisis, or wildly boost the quality and quantity of education, I've no problems with the alien hunting bit. That's merely the test harness, not the primary usage. If the science and technology costs tens of billions, but the alien hunting bit after that costs a few million more, that's a sufficiently s

  • I believe there was a really bad Ben Affleck sci-fi movie where they used some sort of gravity lens to look back/forward in time and were able to manipulate certain outcomes.

  • Summary Title is False (Score:3)

    by crunchygranola ( 1954152 ) on Thursday July 28, 2022 @08:49AM (#62741220)

    NASA is not planning anything here. Researchers at The Aerospace Corporation posted a pre-print with a prima facie feasibility description of what would be the most expensive, elaborate and long-term (to have any pay-off) space mission ever considered, much less attempted. But not, as the paper documents, impossible.

    Something like this wouldn't reach the "planning" stage for decades to come.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      That's quite a bit of an exaggeration. The Voyager and Pioneer probes weren't really planned to be in operation this long, but they are longer duration than this would be. The starshot project is certainly "considered" and it would be MUCH longer duration.

  • Has a pretty straightforward answer: once a species becomes technological in nature it is already effectively extinct. Evolution and in turn all our drives and inhibitions progress in a roughly linear fashion. Technology used to augment our environments inline with desires and to quell inhibitions compounds upon itself exponentially. The natural result is an environment, from physical to cultural to everything in between, which de-syncs from the biological systems to such an extreme that things will impl
  • Spacetime does not exist, therefore it is not possible to warp it around the Sun. I would like to see aliens, however.
  • align sun lens with other star to increase reach

  • Let's see... It's taken Voyager 1 over 44 years to reach a distance of 156 AU, so why would anyone think it's reasonable to fund a space telescope mission that would only start its operations at a minimum of 550 AU? At Voyager's speed, it would take over 150 years to reach that distance. These folks say it'll take them only 25-30 years, meaning they hope their ship will go 46-76% faster. That means they'll be going pretty fast by the time they get to 550 AU, but they'd still have plenty of time to turn arou

  • The aliens in Washington seem to think that money for projects like this will somehow magically appear. Perhaps it's the magnification effect of the hot air cloud around the city.

  • We can see galaxies many billions of light years away.

    We can see information coming from 100 billion planets in this galaxy alone !

    If the Brits couldn't stop pirate radio there's no chance one entire civilzation could stop all the transmissions from everybody. We would have spotted that.

    Life isn't self forming.

    Don't throw tax dollars at this waste !

  • A telescope at a location halfway to the Oort Cloud can only image things along the narrow line from it through the center of the sun. It is a point on the surface of an impossibly large sphere with a circumference of 2*Pi*r, roughly 7% of a lightyear.

    Once that first observation was completed, what would be needed for the telescope to be moved to another location on that vast sphere to examine a different exoplanet? How long would it take?

    To me, this is the true limitation of the idea: It's a telescope tha

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