Earth 2.0 ET: What is China’s new project to find ‘Earth 2.0’?

As per reports, the Chinese Academy of Sciences has launched a project called “Earth 2.0 ET”.The plan aims to find a planet similar to Earth orbiting a Sun-like star.

What is the Earth 2.0 ET project?

The Chinese white paper reveals that the mission will measure the occurrence rate and orbital distributions of eath-sized planets.

According to the reports, six transit telescopes would be equipped with a “field of view of 500 square degrees”. The mission will monitor thousands of transiting planets, “including the elusive Earth twins orbiting solar-type stars”, it said.

Additionally, the seventh telescope will monitor an area “4 square degrees toward the galactic bulge”. As per the statement, the powerful telescopes will measure “hundreds of long-period and free-floating planets”.

The mission statement also claimed that “transit and the microlensing telescopes will revolutionize our understandings of terrestrial planets across a large swath of orbital distances and free space”.

More on the ambitious plan

Earth 2.0 ET is a part of the larger international effort of finding worlds that have the potential to sustain life. Following the identification of such a planet, they will use telescopes and scan biosignatures. Biosignatures are signs of life and can also answer the age-old question ‘Are we alone in the universe?’.

“Habitable Earth-like planets around solar-type stars, i.e., Earth 2.0s, are likely the most favorable places to search for extraterrestrial life. This is due to their potentially having physical, chemical, and potentially biological environments similar to Earth,” stated the team led by Jian Ge. Jian is a professor at the CAS’ Shanghai Astronomical Observatory. “Therefore, it is necessary to identify Earth 2.0s first before extraterrestrial life can be possibly detected. Most current space missions for exoplanets do not cover this key area,” they added.

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