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A Breakthrough in the Search for Alpha Centauri's Planets

Lee Billings

Alpha Centauri, our nearest neighboring star system, rises above the European Southern Observatory's Very Large
Telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. Credit: Y. Beletsky (LCO)/ESO

Before fulfilling its audacious dream of interstellar flight, Breakthrough Starshotthe private effort funded by
billionaire Yuri Milner to conduct high-speed robotic voyages to the stars within a generationmust first find
a destination.

The projects primary target is the triple star system Alpha Centauri, our nearest interstellar neighbor at just
over four light-years away. Of its three stars, only the red dwarf Proxima Centauri is known to have a planet,
an Earth-mass world in a star-hugging orbit where liquid waterand therefore life as we know itcould exist.
Astronomers already have plans to closely study this planet, but may find it unwelcoming due to its
bombardment with intense flares from its nearby host star. Many believe the systems larger, brighter and
more sunlike stars, the binary pair Alpha Centauri A and B, offer better prospects for life-friendly worlds, even
though all previous planet hunts there have come up empty-handed. Thoroughly examining these two stars
requires expensive new instruments and many nights on the worlds best, most in-demand telescopesboons
just as elusive as Alpha Centauris planets. For years, this relative lack of resources has rendered any worlds

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around Alpha Centauri A or B effectively invisible to us, lost in the overpowering glare of those stars.

Before the end of the decade, however, they may appear in plain view. This week, Milners Breakthrough
Initiatives organization announced a partnership with the European Southern Observatory (ESO) to search for
and image the planets of Alpha Centauri A and B as early as 2019. The partnership, in which Breakthrough
purchases instrument upgrades and observing time on ESOs Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile for an
undisclosed sum, is only the first phase of the organizations more ambitious plans to scour nearby stars for
promising worlds that its Starshot probes might someday visit.

Its high time that humanity gets to know its neighboring star system better and finds out if it contains more
planets, Milner says. This collaboration will develop state-of-the-art instruments to enhance the already
impressive VLT in pursuit of that common goal. Breakthrough representatives say the organization is already
in discussions to augment its search with additional Southern Hemisphere observatories, and is also
investigating possibilities for launching small, planet-finding space telescopes.

Breakthroughs Big Bet

According to Olivier Guyon, an astronomer at the University of Arizona who helped craft Breakthroughs
planet-hunting goals, Milners support was crucial for persuading ESO and other risk-averse public
institutions to take a chance on Alpha Centauri. This is not just a billionaire funding something that no one
else is interested in; many of us have been pushing for this for years without success, because this is an
expensive and risky venture, he says. Most people say we probably wont find anything, but I think we have
to look anyway, and Breakthrough is providing enough resources and assuming enough risk to make that
happen.

Statistics on thousands of worlds from NASAs planet-hunting Kepler mission and other surveys
suggest practically all stars should harbor planetswith perhaps twenty percent of sunlike stars bearing one in
the habitable zone where temperatures could allow life as we know it to thrive. But those same statistics also
indicate that planets are less common around binary stars like Alpha Centauri A and B, and previous studies
have largely ruled out large worlds like Jupiter or Neptune there. All this may mean there is a better-than-even
chance the search will find no planets at all, says Markus Kasper, an astronomer and ESO science lead for the
collaboration. But there may be habitable planets [around Alpha Centauri A and B] that we could already see
with current telescopes, so we will give it a try, Kasper says.

With Breakthroughs planned upgrades, Kasper says the VLT could detect a planet twice Earths size in the
habitable zones of either Alpha Centauri A or B in about 60 hours of observations. No one yet knows whether
such a super-Earth would be a habitable world like our ownor instead an airless rock or a gas-shrouded
miniature version of Neptune. What is certain is that of all the worlds already detected around other stars,
such midsize planets are both the most abundant and most mysterious. Whats more, Guyon and other
astronomers say that further, as yet unfunded upgrades could also allow the VLT to spy any smaller, Earth-size

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planets in Alpha Centauri.

Even if planets are there to be found, this will be a tough measurement, so its a long shot, says Bruce
Macintosh, an astronomer at Stanford University who has advised Breakthrough. Im always a bit of a
pessimist about these sorts of thingslooking at only two stars, even for common planets like super-Earths, is
a gamble.

Presuming that gamble pays off and the VLT spots a planet in our nearest neighboring star system, the
discovery could catalyze an explosion of interest and follow-up investigation. Studying Alpha Centauris
planets would likely shift from a fringe pastime to a staple of astronomy. Other telescopes operating at
different wavelengths could attempt to reveal the planets exact orbit and size as well as its bulk composition
and surface temperature. Ultimately, a nascent fleet of next-generation observatories could even probe the
world for so-called biosignaturesgases such as oxygen and methane that, here on Earth anyway, are mostly
produced by living organisms. And, of course, Milner and his merry band of Breakthrough researchers would
strive to send robotic probes there.

Planets from the Vortex

The VLT is a sprawling research complex dominated by four eight-meter telescopes, each of which would be a
world-class facility on its own. Telescopes with mirrors much smaller would struggle to resolve any faint
planets flitting like fireflies around Alpha Centauris stars. But the VLTs status as a workhorse for global
ground-based astronomy is not due to massive hardware alone. It is perched high on a mountaintop in the
desolate Atacama Desert of northern Chile, far from light-polluting cities and well above most clouds and
other weather patterns. On moonless nights visitors can become disoriented and euphoric in the cold, thin air
and all-consuming darkness, as countless stars emerge like nameless leviathans from the heavenly depths to
overwhelm the constellations. In that sea of alien suns the stars of Alpha Centauriamong the brightest in the
southern skiesshine like a familiar and beckoning beacon.

To glimpse Alpha Centauris planets, Breakthrough and ESO plan to upgrade an instrument called VISIR (VLT
Imager and Spectrometer for mid-Infrared), which scans the sky at a thermal wavelength of 10 microns. At
that wavelength an Earth-like planet would glow like a lightbulb, although it would still appear millions of
times fainter than its sunlike starbut thats still better than billions of times fainter, as it would be in visible
light.

A device called a coronagraph can be built into a telescope to block most of the photons from a distant stars
glow, allowing the dim light from a planet to pass into the telescopes sensors and create a glare-free image.
Breakthrough and ESO, working with the University of Lige in Belgium and Uppsala University in Sweden,
plan to develop and install a special, high-contrast vortex coronagraph on VISIR. The device is a
centimeter-wide disk of synthetic diamond, etched with concentric ripples that twist starlight like a corkscrew
and funnel it to the disks edges. This enables peering very close to the star, as close as a telescopes resolving

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power allows, says Olivier Absil, an astronomer developing the coronagraph at Lige. Using VISIR on the
VLT, we will be able to unleash the full potential of the vortex coronagraph for the first time, Absil says.

For one of the VLTs massive eight-meter mirrors, such a coronagraph would allow a relatively clear view of
warm planets in the habitable zones of both Alpha Centauri A and B. Or rather it would, if Earths starlight-
smearing atmosphere was not in the way. Modern observatories use adaptive opticscomputer-controlled
deformable mirrors that change shape thousands of times per secondto cancel out the worst effects of
atmospheric turbulence on starlight. Once upgraded with its coronagraph as well as a calibration module from
Kampf Telescope Optics in Munich, VISIR will be mounted on the VLTs eight-meter Unit Telescope 4, which
has the observatorys most sophisticated adaptive optics.

The same technologies for imaging Alpha Centauris planets at the VLT could conceivably be exported to other
large southern telescopes equipped with adaptive-optics systems, namely the twin 6.5-meter Magellan
Telescopes and the eight-meter Gemini South telescope. That would bolster the search, boosting its sensitivity
and the likelihood of uncovering any lurking planets. Breakthrough representatives say the organization is
now discussing partnerships with the leadership of both observatories. The 10-micron VLT projectand
Magellan/Gemini if they go forwardis likely to be humanitys first attempt at directly imaging an Earth
analogue around another sunlike star, says Christian Marois, an astronomer and Breakthrough adviser at the
National Research Council of Canada. The next decade will be quite exciting for the search of habitable
planets, and Alpha Centauri is the first logical star system to look at.

Possible Futures

Outside of Breakthroughs ground-based efforts, other projects could also reveal Alpha Centauris planets. A
new generation of ground-based Extremely Large Telescopes will debut in the 2020s. Boasting supersize
mirrors more than 30 meters wide, these observatories could image Alpha Centauris worlds with relative ease
at mid-infrared wavelengths. Such gargantuan telescopes would build on the technologies now being
developed by Breakthrough and other organizations, and would offer hope of detecting biosignatures and
other gases in planets atmospheres to reveal whether they are habitableor even inhabited.

NASAs 6.5-meter infrared James Webb Space Telescope, launching in 2018, could also conceivably monitor
the star system in the mid-infrared rangebut probably wont. As a general-purpose observatory, much of
Webbs limited lifetime is already committed to other astronomical investigations. Moreover, because Alpha
Centauri A and B are so bright and close together, Webbs coronagraph could only block the light of one star
while the light from the other beats down for tens of hours on the telescopes delicate, irreparable sensorsa
risk that mission operators are unlikely to take.

Beyond these, other space-based resources could investigate Alpha Centauri in visible, reflected light rather
than infraredproviding crucial multiwavelength analysis that could pin down the true nature of any
discovered worlds. NASAs successor to Webb, a 2.4-meter space telescope called WFIRST slated to launch in

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the mid-2020s, could potentially observe Alpha Centauri. But like Webb it already has a full docket of other
research priorities, and will probably be similarly challenged by the brightness and proximity of the two target
stars.

Instead, glimpsing the planets in visible light might require the exact opposite of a government-funded
megaproject. Ruslan Belikov and Eduardo Bendek, two scientists at NASA Ames Research Center, have
outlined innovative plans for a small space telescope with a half-meter mirror that could launch before the end
of the decade on a dedicated mission to obtain basic images of any Alpha Centauri planets. The concept, with
an estimated cost of several tens of millions of dollars, has proved attractive enough to garner the attention of
private investors. Breakthrough is also reportedly investigating a small space mission of its own, a telescope
devoted to watching for wobbles of Alpha Centauri A and B rather than directly imaging planets. Such
wobbles, produced by the gravitational tugging of unseen worlds, could be used to pin down each planets
precise mass and orbit without the need to first snap a planetary portrait.

I see all of these efforts as very complementary, and we should do all of them if we can, because together they
serve to paint a more complete picture of any planets that might exist around Alpha Centauri, Belikov says.
Of course there is a part of me that wants [our concept] to be first, but that is negligible compared to my
curiosity about whats out there and the benefits a discovery with any method would bring. I dont see this as
a race, but rather as a collective concerted search. When a colleague or a friend scores, I cheer.

Lee Billings

Lee Billings is an editor at Scientific American covering space and physics.

Credit: Nick Higgins

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