(Web Desk) – A prominent astrophysicist believes that aliens seeking to contact us may get an assist from stars and black holes.
When a star emits light, it isn’t just sending out a single ray.
Instead, it emits countless rays and, as they pass huge bodies in space, like a galaxy for example, that object's gravity is so powerful that it it bends the light.
And as those beams bend back, they can collide, combining their energy.
The result is a phenomenon called gravitational lensing: The gravity of huge objects in space amplifies the light from further-away objects — like a giant magnifying glass.
And while new space telescopes like NASA's James Webb Space Telescope are designed to pick up even the faintest light from billions of light-years away, even they have a limit.
But combining gravitational lensing with the Webb Telescope has allowed astronomers to peer into the furthest and oldest regions of the universe.
That's why Slava Turyshev, a physicist who works for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, believes that gravitational lensing could reveal so much more than galaxies, stars and black holes — it could enable us to discover extraterrestrial life.
In a recent paper posted to the preprint server arXiv, Turyshev lays out a compelling theory: If enough large objects in the universe that are capable of bending and amplifying light were to align, then it would be possible to transmit massive amounts of energy through interstellar space.
This could take the form of laser light or microwaves, he explained to The Messenger, amplified by gravitational lensing.
Turyshev believes that if used in the right way, then gravitational lensing could be used to beam images back to Earth of far-away exoplanets. But it will take a new generation of space telescopes, send to specific points in interstellar space where the gravitational lenses align.
“Using gravitational lensing you will be able to see the topography, weather patterns on all the different exoplanets,” Turyshev said.
Turyshev acknowledged that current technology does not yet meet his ambitions — and it will likely take another lifetime to manage to do what he proposes.
Only two manmade objects have made it to interstellar space, the Voyager satellites, and they launched in the 1970s. Voyager 1 became the first manmade object to enter interstellar space in 2012.
But there's another way, Turyshev said. By looking carefully at nearby stars, Turyshev said it may be possible to spot "periodic signals" that indicate intelligent alien life.
"What if there is somebody else with whom you would like to communicate?," Turyshev asked.
"Potentially, if somebody else is transmitting now toward us, we should be able to receive those signals," he said.
"Potentially, now, we should be able to enable the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (by) using optical telescopes on Earth to scan different stars around our neighborhood" for these signals, he said.