Alien hunting telescope that can see 12 billion years into the past

Chilean desert shows how the world’s most powerful telescope is beginning its search for extraterrestrial life

A visit to the Chajnantor plateau is a breath-taking experience - and not just because it’s 5,100 metres up. Perched in the Andes mountains in one of the driest places on earth, where clear skies and the thin atmosphere guarantee perfect viewing conditions, 66 house-sized antennae are spread across the featureless landscape.

The antennae stood sentinel, angled towards the heavens. Suddenly they started to swing upwards and turn, silently and in unison, in a balletic movement choreographed by an unseen force. It was a moment of pure theatre - and easy to imagine they were responding to a signal from another world.

From this barren spot the next chapter in the exploration of the universe and the search for extra-terrestrial life will be launched today with the official inauguration of the world’s most powerful radio telescope.

The antennae, which each weigh 100 tons and cost $6m to build, are linked in a network enabling them to probe the most distant parts of the universe.

Together, they will enable astronomers to search in greater detail than ever before and seek answers to the question: are we alone?

The Atacama Large Millimetre Array (Alma) radio telescope has taken a decade to build and cost $1.4bn. Yet although it is operating at less than a 10th of its capacity - it will be up to a year before it is used at maximum power - it is already yielding new insights into the origins of galaxies, stars and planets.

Most scientists believe that statistically it is likely that life exists somewhere else in the universe, based on the number of stars like the Sun.

More than 2,700 candidate planets orbiting other stars have been identified - the vast majority are expected to be confirmed as true “exoplanets”..

It is possible to work only for limited periods at the site of the world’s most powerful radio telescope, but it is too high for people to live there. Engineers go up and down from the base station, working with oxygen cylinders on their backs, spend no more than eight hours at the top, and work eight weeks on and six weeks off.

The symptoms of altitude sickness - headache, nausea, vomiting - can strike suddenly when an ascent is made rapidly without time to acclimatise.

Astronomers using Alma have already identified sugar molecules in the gas surrounding a young Sun-like star – the first time sugar has been found in space.

“The discovery shows that the building blocks of life are in the right place at the right time to be included in planets forming around the star,” the Joint Alma Observatory said.

The project is an international collaboration in which the European Southern Observatory (ESO), a consortium of 15 countries including the UK, whose subscription is paid via the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council , has played a leading role.

Valentin Ivanov, a staff astronomer with ESO from Bulgaria, said there had been “enormous advances” in astronomy in the last decade and Alma opened a new era with its ability to detect and analyse the chemical composition of molecules in space.

But he is cautious about finding life outside our own solar system. “Our best bet is the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. It is very difficult to prove the existence of life on planets around other stars.” he said.

Douglas Pierce-Price, spokesman for ESO, said Alma’s advantage over optical telescopes was its ability to penetrate dust clouds to look at galaxies further away and observe the formation of stars.

“If you want to understand the history of the universe you have to look further back in time.”In addition, Alma is designed to observe longer wavelengths beyond the visible light spectrum and it is in this part of the spectrum that the chemicals essential to life such as water can be detected through spectroscopic analysis

- The Independent