Tópico: Giant "starshade" could reveal new exoplanets

[Hold the Door]

An astrophysicist in the US has devised an unusual way to spot extrasolar planets -- by blocking the light from their parent star with a space-based shield. Webster Cash of the University of Colorado says that a thin, sunflower-shaped plastic screen measuring about 50 metres across could be enough to allow planets as small as the Earth to be observed directly. The big snag is that the shield, dubbed a starshade, would have to be attached to a spacecraft and placed tens of thousands of kilometres away from a space telescope. Cash's design may sound like science fiction, but it has already received a $400,000 funding boost from NASA (Nature 442 51).

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Interessante que em um dos episódios da série Cosmos, Carl Sagan já se referia a esse método para observar novos planetas, inclusive demonstrando em uma sala de aula para várias crianças.