Heat-seeking, alien-hunting telescope in the works
Heat-seeking, alien-hunting telescope in the works
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The Colossus Consortium
An artist's rendering of what the proposed Colossus alien-seeking telescope would look like.
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By Elizabeth Howell
Space.com
We might find aliens through the heat their civilizations give off, astronomers say, but it will take a megatelescope to do the job. Such a telescope, in fact, is planned.
The telescope — called Colossus — would be a massive 250-foot (77 meters) telescope, which is more than double the aperture of any telescope yet constructed.
To keep costs down, the proposed $1 billion telescope would use thin mirror technology and few large aperture mirror segments. The sensitivity of the scope, though, could be enough to spot cities or other signs of aliens for planets as far as 60 to 70 light-years from Earth, its backers said. [Stacking Up the 10 Biggest Telescopes on Earth]
"If we had an investor come and say 'Look, here are the resources you need,' we could have the telescope built within five years," said Jeff Kuhn, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy, who is on the proposal team.
More:
http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/07/18832228-heat-seeking-alien-hunting-telescope-in-the-works?=
= new reply since forum marked as read
Or, hot. 
I know, picky picky. 
3 cm - 100 cm
In other words, not likely to be able to provide as many pixels on the sky as a 77 meter optical scope. Visual light is 390 nm - 700 nm.
The things you see out there, they happened in the past. Sixty or 70 light years isn't too bad, but if they were searching waaaay out there, that point would make a difference.
It kind of freaks me out, the way astronomy reporting tends to treat everything we see through a telescope as happening right now. The stuff happened long ago, and a lot of different long times ago.
But I am odd. 
Interesting news piece, at any rate. Thank you.
