ExoLife Finder: A Ground‑Based 35‑Meter Ring Interferometer to Directly Image Earth‑Like Exoplanets (with the SELF Precursor)

To the point

ELF is a bold ground-based telescope concept led by Jeff Kuhn that aims to directly image Earth-like exoplanets by combining light from a ring of 15 five-meter mirrors to cancel starlight with nulling interferometry, with a smaller SELF precursor of 15 twenty-inch mirrors on an 11.5-foot ring planned for Teide Observatory in 2026–2027 to prove the approach, and it requires nanometer-scale precision, 10-millisecond update rates, and machine-learning control to map planetary surfaces and search for infrared biosignatures, a venture discussed by John Mather, Jill Tarter, and Svetlana Berdyugina as bold but potentially transformative for life-detection science.