A space telescope to detect extraterrestrial life

The Space Research Institute of the Netherland thinks it may be possible to identify signs of alien life within the next 25 years, without the need for a space mission.

A new method

Astronomers have speculated for decades about how observations of exoplanets could provide evidence of extraterrestrial life.

The Eskimo Nebula X-ray

The XMM-Newton space observatory agree to us to look surrounded by the covering fuzzy Eskimo Nebula, instructive a warm face gas to 2 million degrees Celsius.

This image is a amalgam of data collected by XMM-Newton (blue) and the Hubble Space Telescope (red and green), and highlights the complex nature of terrestrial nebula, the swan song of stars like our Sun .

When these stars mature, they begin to shed their outer layers to expose its core, a high temperature. 

Violent collision shaped into Vesta

The new model is based on computer simulations of collisions between asteroid Vesta separated and a couple of rocks from 32 km in diameter in the last billion years. The results suggest that cosmic impacts caused Vesta's crust to melt and then re-form, with its thicker crust than can be explained by typical rock layers, the scientists said.

Collisions carved two large impact craters on the surface of Vesta. The oldest, Veneneia, formed about 2,000 million years. With a diameter of 395 km, the crater covers nearly three quarters of the diameter of Vesta Ecuador. Covering 90% of the diameter of Vesta, is one of the largest craters in the Solar System.