SORRY to break it to you, but this isn't the head of a giant robot being built in a secret military base somewhere – we don't get pictures of those. Rather, it's a giant pair of eyes staring across vast cosmic distances in an attempt to find aliens. So that's nearly as exciting.
The eyes belong to the recently upgraded Large Binocular Telescope (LBT), which sits on top of Mount Graham in Arizona. Its two 8.4-metre-wide mirrors can collect and combine light as if they were a single 11.8-metre mirror, technically making it the largest operating telescope in the world.
Astronomers are currently using the LBT to study the dust around distant stars, with the hope of understanding how it might obscure light reflected by Earth-like planets in orbit.
Analysing this light could reveal the chemicals present in these planets' atmospheres, potentially hinting at the presence of alien life – but only if we can filter out the effects of the surrounding dust.
It's going to be a good few years before we're able to study these Earth-like planets in such detail. But if hostile aliens happen to come a-knockin' before then, maybe our giant robot head will scare them away. I won't tell them the truth if you don't.
This article appeared in print under the headline "Robot eyes scan for dust"
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