Will new giant telescope unlock secrets of universe?

You wanted to know

"Will there ever be a planet with living things?" asked a student in Gregg Thompson's sixth-grade social studies class at Woodlands School in Gurnee.

Six years ago, NASA launched a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and sent the Kepler space observatory on a multiyear mission to find exoplanets - planets outside of our solar system that might possibly have life-sustaining properties like those here on Earth.

Pictures sent from the floating telescope revealed more than 1,000 exoplanets and more than 4,500 exoplanet candidates.

Reaction wheels on the vehicle stopped operating two years ago, limiting the type of data Kepler collects and sends. Find out more about the Kepler and K2 mission on the NASA website, www.nasa.gov/kepler/discoveries.

These discoveries are fuel for the perennial and long-standing quest to find Earth's mirror image, or another planet with some sort of life-form. An international group of astronomers and astrophysicists representing the world's top research institutions are constructing a giant telescope that might identify another Earth in another solar system.

Giant mirrors for the next generation of terrestrial telescope, the GMT or Giant Magellan Telescope, are now being formed deep beneath the University of Arizona football stadium. Seven mirrors, each weighing 17 tons, will be assembled in Chile's high Atacama Desert on an 8,500-foot peak. The telescope will be housed in a 22-foot-high dome.

Funded by a consortium of 11 international partners, this astronomical marvel will be fully operational by 2024. Its unique shape will allow it to gather data from extremely far distances with clarity, and also to minimize glare from stars that can block out other objects.

Wendy Freedman of the University of Chicago chairs the GMT project. The telescope will have the capability to view the very first objects in the universe to emit light, she said.

"It is quite possible that there are other planets with living things. In fact, the recent discoveries of thousands of other planets lead astronomers to believe that there are billions of planets in our Milky Way galaxy, suggesting that the odds are high that at least some of them would harbor life," Freedman said.

"This is a question that astronomers are trying to answer in the next decades. A number of new telescopes are now being planned that should allow us to search for evidence for life on the nearest planets."

It was almost 100 years ago that scientist Edwin Hubble discovered there are galaxies other than our own Milky Way Galaxy, and the universe is ever expanding.

Scientists involved in the GMT project are excited about the prospect of finding life on other planets and also hope to answer these questions as outlined on the Giant Magellan Telescope website, www.gmto.org: How did the first galaxies form? What are dark matter and dark energy that make up most of our universe? How did stellar matter from the Big Bang congeal into what we see today? What is the fate of the universe?

Freedman predicts the future is bright for young people considering careers in astronomy.

"Future opportunities in astronomy are likely to be very exciting. A large suite of new and powerful telescopes are being planned to address some of the biggest mysteries in astronomy, including what is causing the universe to accelerate, what is the nature of unseen (dark) matter, and the possibility of life on other worlds," Freedman said.

"To become an astronomer/astrophysicist requires a passion for understanding the nature of the universe and developing your skills at mathematics and physics, ultimately pursuing a graduate degree."

Check it out

The Warren Newport Library in Gurnee suggests these titles on astronomy:

• "Seven Wonders of the Rocky Planets and Their Moons" by Ron Miller

• "Is There Life in Outer Space?" by Isaac Asimov

• "Are We Alone? Scientists Search for Life in Space" by Gloria Skurzynski

• "Life on Earth - and Beyond: an Astrobiologist Quest" by Pamela S. Turner

• "Planet Hunter: Geoff Marcy and the Search for Other Earths" by Vicki O. Wittenstein