Sunday, April 5, 2009

World's Largest Telescope Will Search Heavens For Habitable Planets Like Earth

Mission Incredible: The Extremely Large Telescope will be even more powerful than the Very Large Telescope, pictured here.

From The Telegraph:

A giant telescope powerful enough to identify habitable planets like Earth in distant solar systems is to be built by scientists.

The European Extremely Large Telescope will be the first optical telescope capable of picking out the weak pinpricks of light that are reflected from planets as they orbit stars.

Astronomers claim the huge instrument, which will house a mirror the width of five double decker buses placed end to end, will be able to spot rocky Earth-like planets up to 100 million million miles away.

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