Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

A Telescope The Size Of The Earth

Posted by timothy on from the why-not-even-bigger dept.

Neil Blender writes "From this article: "Astronomers have fashioned an Earth-sized virtual radio telescope that can distinguish celestial features 3,000 times smaller than the those observed by the Hubble Space Telescope. The device, which uses atomic clocks and a custom supercomputer to link together radio dishes on three continents, is the most powerful radio observatory ever, according to scientists." Some parts of the custom supercomputer use linux and IDE RAID."

2 of 66 comments (clear)

  1. Light Versus Radio Waves by Tablizer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    AFAIK this technique doesn't work on optical observations.

    It is theoretically possible IIRC, but just much tougher than radio waves. The timing is very important to putting the signals back together properly in the computer. Radio waves are less dense than light-waves, and thus you have more tolerence of timing errors.

    Thus, someday we may be able to do such with light, but for now it is beyond our technology (except at close range).

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  2. Re:And immediatly they discovered by Tablizer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    that we still can't see planets becuase most planets don't have radio stations on them :)

    Jupiter does. Some amatures can even detect Jupiter's radio emmissions from home-built radio scopes.

    I have read that Jupiter broadcasts more radio noise than the Sun, but don't quote me on this.

    BTW, it has no beat and you can't dance to it.

    --
    Table-ized A.I.