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Gas Clouds As Giant Telescopes
allrong writes "Astronomers have found a way to harness clouds of gas in space to make a natural 'telescope' more powerful than any manmade telescope currently in operation. Read the press release or take a look at the images and description of the process."
People always reported seeing visions when I farted, but I never knew there was a scientific basis for their claims!
--sdem
Will we be able to focus on something of our choosing, not just something that happens to be on the other side of a gas cloud?
...
Extracting data from these requires as many monitoring facilities and personnel as a real telescope. If you call this a telescope budget cutters will claim we don't need to build new hardware out of the federal budget.
Sure, they might be able to see things in super-fine detail. But how often is there going to be a gas cloud that acts as a perfect lens for whatever you want to look at?
It's still a cool idea, however.
find / -name "*.sig" | xargs rm
So that seemingly made up excuse for the explosion of the truck in MIB caused by light reflecting off of some gas is now about to be a reality.
SIGFAULT
since when did clouds of gas have enough power to act as gravitational lenses?
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
It's a long way to expulse all that gas...
Gravitational lenses have been known about for a long time, and studied in detail. Theoretically any object has a gravitational field and can therefore curve light around it, acting as a lens. Most of the lenses studied up to now have been galaxies lensing distant quasars, but a sufficiently massive dust cloud would produce the same effect.
----
Striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap, will be the leap ho
Slashdot links to story about some pretty fascinating science and the highest rated comment is a fart joke.
Somehow I am not surprised.
the next question is how far in or out can we see? The magnification should increase distance also... who knows what we can see with this...?
With the new technique researchers will be able to resolve details about 10 microarcconds across - equivalent to seeing a sugar cube on the Moon, from Earth. (A microarcsecond is measure of angular size - how big an object looks. It's a third of a billionth of a degree.)
Fucking amazing !!!
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
NASA requests 4.2 bazillion (USD) to fly out there and fix the optics...
signatures are for fools with hands
could this have anything to do with the report the other week that the hubble telescope's pictures were clearer than quantum physics dictated they should be???
This idea is not like an optical telescope (kinda Hubble) that can take neat pictures.
Its an effect that amplifies the radio emissions of a quasar or any other source of these which pass through the gas clouds so they can be more easily read here on earth.
BTW, you could RTFA which is very short, I promise.
My english is sow-sow. Sowhat?
Now I know why the cute but of the girl next to me at work looks slightly bigger once in a while. And she keeps denying it is not her. Now I can use some scientific evidence.
Can you immagine if we could see peoples gas? What a terrible thought.
Mother Nature is not profitable, now back to work with you, peon.
I'm so glad they included those giant 5mb copies of the images. Those puny little jpegs just weren't enough to explain the process to me. If there's no scrollbar, it's too small.
That's not a soda... it's a caffeine delivery device!
I was recently reading in Astronomer Monthly magazine that scientists now believe they can get usable signals from Voyager, long after they should be too faint, because they are amplified by the giant gas cloud that hovers around Uranus.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Picard: "Geordi, do we still have the power left to do this?"
Geordi: "I suppose it's possible.....I'll need to divert power from the shields and possibly redirect the conduits to decks 10 through 20, but yes, it can be done"
*10 seconds of silence pass while the rest of the officers shoot uneasy glances towards one another*
Picard: "Make it so. Number one, join me in the ready room...."
thing to thank Australia for. Do we rock, or what? For a country with our population, we seriously fight out of our division.
Hmm. A little off-topic?
Actually, that the CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organisation) is financially supported mainly (I believe) by the (Australian) federal government to find/discover/create/invent things that benefit Australia. Does this happen in other countries? Quite often I get the impression, especially with the good ol' US of A, that most discoveries/inventions are always by private companies, and little is supported by the Feds. Of course there NASA, but general scientific research?
Enlighten me, I say.
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. -- Leo Tolstoy
Right now the server is still fast.... but if that changes:
;)
I grabbed the large versions and set up some torrents for use with BitTorrent (a P2P download system that helps reduce bandwidth usage for servers). You can grab the full-sized figure 1 with text here and the the full-sized figure 2 with text here.
Hopefully this will work properly
I'd like to see an application that didn't require at least 3 sources here on Earth, because even though the lensing may "appear" more powerful, you'd still probably want to triangulate "through" it to get a really good idea what you're looking at.
:)
On a side note... A sugar cube on the moon... That's wild! Perhaps now we can read the warning label on the Sun, as those skin cancer commercials suggest.
stuff |
..that there's a giant gas cloud hovering around ur anus?
Thanks, but TMI.
Since when does a gas "cloud" appear as a perfectly shperical radio lensing bubble? I think some Aussies have lost their marbles and are seeing them, much like the ancient Greeks of the past, by gazing stupifully into the sky.
Who tha fuck are you??!?
Feh. Sounds like vaporware to me.
Thank you for not being cowards like the rest of the world and helping us (the US and the UK) deal with tyranny and evil. Then again, shouldn't this be expected from a country that has always kicked ass in any armed conflict they happen to find themselves in?
the links don't work. mod down.
c'mon, this is hardly a threat to the gas clouds' well being. gravitational lensing is as close to a passive process as you'll find-- we just sit back and watch what's "bent out of shape" by a distant object.
He was a boy, she was a girl
Can I make it anymore obvious?
He was a punk, she did ballet
What more can I say?
He wanted her, she'd never tell
secretly she wanted him as well.
But all of her friends stuck up there nose
they had a problem with his baggy clothes.
He was a skater boy, she said see ya later boy
he wasn't good enought for her
She had a pritty face, but her head was up in space
she needed to come back down to earth.
five years from now, she sits at home
feeding the baby
she's all alone
she turns on tv
guess who she sees
skater boy rockin' up MTV.
she calles up her friends,they already know
and they've all got tickets to see his show
she tags along and stands in the crowd
looks up at the man that she turned down.
He was a skater boy,she said see ya later boy
he wasn't good enought for her
now he's a super star
slamin' on his guitar
does your pritty face see what he's worth?
sorry girl but you missed out
well tuff luck that boys mine now
we are more than just good friends
this is how the story ends
too bad that you couldn't see
see that man that boy could be
there is more that meets the eye
I see the soul that is inside
He's just a boy, and i'm just a girl
can I make it anymore obvious?
we are in love, haven't you heard
how we rock eachothers world
I'm with the skater boy, I said see ya later boy
i'll be back stage after the show
i'll be at a studio
singing the song we wrote
about a girl you used to know
The first person to make a joke about, err, 'human produced' gas clouds should receive a lifetime ban from Slashdot. After me, that is...
I would have made an informative post but it will take me a couple of weeks to read all the referrences. Then the references of the referrences. Followed by the referrences of the referrences of the referrences. After which I should maybe be able to make an informative post.
If an informative comment happens on an old thread does anybody hear?
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
you'd have to know the structure of the gas cloud down to its minute detail? How in hell do you find out that?
For instance how do you calculate the thickness of the gas cloud between the earth and this quasar its supposedly magnifying in on? As the thickness of the clous would affect the radio waves of the quasar more than a thinner gas cloud. Whats the yardstick to measure the gas cloud?
I've been using a technique similar to this in my own research for years, except on a microscopic scale... I know, I know, microscopy sounds like a completely different field from astonomy, but they share surprising similarities. In both sciences, we use powerful instruments to see what we can't see with the naked eye. A telescope is a powerful magnifier whose focal point is at infinity, since for all intents and purposes the stars are infinitely far away. A microscope is like a telescope except its focal point is a few millmeters to a few hundred microns. Therefore, both instruments can take advantage of the same optical techniques.
In microscopy, the limiting resolution is the scattering of light due to small air or water currents (depending on what your speciman is submersed in)--the effects are similar to twinkling stars caused by Earth's atmosphere. Sometimes you can evacuate the sample chamber and remove the effect, but this isn't practical for biological or aqeous specimans.
Therefore, a technique called "reverse diffraction engineering" is used to remove the scattering effects. Powerful software is needed to analyze the subtle image changes over time. The software then digitally removes the scattered light and creates an image with a much higher resolution.
A similar technique is being used to effectively remove the atmosphere above earth based telescopes, creating a "vacuum column" above them. I don't have a link, but this technique was demonstrated last year at a European observatory. A full blown telescope is in the works. This technique could render the Hubbel telescope, and the need to put telescopes in space, obsolete.
anyone wanna bet that some space scientist really just wants to use these space gas telescopes to try to catch a glimpse at a space alien chix0r through her space alien apartment window?
maybe x10 will release a portable 10-ton spyspacegastelescope cam.
They say "gas clouds" like there are known clouds of gas following the earth. I am certainly a neophyte when it comes to astronomy, but I would have thought SOMEONE would have mentioned this to me at SOME point.
What gas clouds?
"...equivalent to seeing a sugar cube on the Moon..."
-- I beg your pardon... how many sugar cubes?
-- One.
-- Bonk!
This thing would probably amplify the power of the Lightning Bolt!
Old people fall. Young people spring. Rich people summer and winter.
I wonder what the people were smoking when they came up with this...
A man is walking down a street and the Devil appears. The Devil says I'll bet if you ask me to do 3 things I can do them. If so, your soul belongs to me, if not, i'll leave you alone. So the man says, ok, make a million dollars appear right here, and the devil happily obliged. Then the man said give me the ability to fly, and the man sprouted wings on the spot. Then the man farted and said, put that in a jar. The devil frowned and disappeared.
-Look lively. LOOK LIVELY!!! --Mr. Shmallow
Beans and beans over beans. :)
I understand how this could be useful, but I'm not sure I understand the practical scientific application. We can see things on the other side of the Gas Cloud, but if this is the only one they know of close to Earth, we should only be able to see a set number of objects through this "lens".
We have the one test object, and we can refine it through this, but that would imply that we can only see a set number of objects. If the actual Gas pocket is too far away, would it still be as practical.
I guess it would be nice to look at quasars, but I've always preferred pretty pictures to scientific readings. I guess that's why I'm not a professional astronomer.
gas (Score:4, Funny)
by SirHalcyon (267061) on Tuesday April 08, @09:42PM (#5689925)
(http://www.uberfoo.net/)
Finally a worth cause to donate the result of all the bean burritos I eat.
Don't call it a telescope. (Score:5, Interesting)
by The Terrorists (619137) on Tuesday April 08, @09:43PM (#5689928)
Extracting data from these requires as many monitoring facilities and personnel as a real telescope.
ROFLMAO
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Yikes. I happily waited for a 9MB jpeg to download, expecting some sort of astronomical beauty, perhaps a new desktop background.... It finally finishes, I fire up the gimp, wait while it loads... and it's utter -crap-! Just an enormously hi-res image of the inane illustrative figures. Don't waste your time or bandwidth.
---
the pen is mightier then the sword. the sword is mightier then the court. the court is mightier then the pen.
Anyway, this news is absolutely fabulous. Nobody has been asking though about how applicable this might be in general astronomy, for example how much of the sky could be covered with this technique, and whether anything like this effect could be created with manmade gaseous clouds.
At the very least, does anyone have a link to the original scientific draft? I am curious about how extensive these clouds are, and whether we can just "dial in" any part of the sky which is covered by such a cloud for a significant portion of the year. In particular would this be something that could be used to get images of extrasolar planets? Who cares what wavelength, the new European lunar probe is going to use X-rays to see what elements are available, maybe we can do the same with these clouds? Only problem is the targets will obviously be more than 50 light years away in this case.
Thanks for the tip. I'm having gobs of fun!
So if I sit outside with a case of beer and chow down on a few cans o' beans I can make a giant telescope :)
Just a correction for the press release,
PKS 1257-326 is more like 4 billion lys (light years), and not 4 million lys
Oh - It's Uranus.
When I was on an island research station last summer, I was astounded to walk out of the building one morning and see waves crashing against the base of a lighthouse, 20 miles away on the edge of the horizon. Something about the air had magnified the distant object so that I could see it with the naked eye. Ever since then I've wondered if it was possible to make an extremely powerful telescope by using gas. It's easy to get magnification by changing eyepieces, but the hard part is getting a nice wide primary lens/mirror to collect light and keep the image from getting blurry. A gas lens would solve that problem by using a huge bubble of heated air -- if you could get it to hold its shape well enough. This isn't exactly the same thing, since it uses radio refraction through charged particles rather than light refraction through air, but I'd like to imagine that it's a start.
Read the press release. The gas doesn't literally act like a lens; that's just a metaphor for the magnification effect it has.
My impression is that it *does* act like a lens, based on references to similar optical techniques. Just an imperfect lens.
But even with the imperfections, one can glean useful information from this. It is sort of like observing something at the bottom of a pool of water. Even though no single view gives you a non-distorted image, if you mentally average out the distortions, you can form a clearer picture in your head.
Gravity lenses of very distance objects are kinda the same way: they distort most stuff, but occasional chance alignments greatly magnify and brighten stuff. Even though the distorted image is not perfect, it is far better than a non-magnified, non-distored image. If the bending "lens" moves, as it does for closer benders such as earth's atmosphere, then you can collect the better views over time, and use some math to put them together a bit better.
Table-ized A.I.
I'm one of the authors on the paper on which the press release is concerned and thought I'd give a bit more of a description as to how the technique actually works.
Remember the old saying that you can tell the difference between a star and planet because the stars twinkle but planets do not? This is because the angular size of the turbulent fluctuations in Earth's atmosphere responsible for twinkling are comparable to the angular diameter of a planet. So the planet looks as if it's "resolved" and its twinkling is damped out. Stars on the other hand, are point-like and thus twinkle like crazy.
What does this have to do with gas clouds in space? Well, our Galaxy has an "atmosphere" too, and it's called the interstellar medium (ISM), even though its density is about 0.03 particles per cubic centimetre. You can think of the ISM as gas clouds, but it is more appropriate to think of it here as a continuous turbulent medium. The ISM causes twinkling too, but at radio rather than optical wavelengths.
To exhibit twinkling or Interstellar Scintillation (ISS) due to the ISM, a radio source has to have an angular diameter less than a few tens of microarcseconds (1 microarcsecond=2.8x10^-10 deg). The resolving power of interstellar scintillation is so high that no quasars look point-like (unlike stars undergoing atmospheric scintillation). In fact, most quasars do not twinkle at all.
The pattern of intensity fluctuations caused by the ISM is actually a convolution of the scintillation pattern that would occur if the quasar were point-like with the actual brightness distribution of the background quasar. We can find the brightness distribution of the quasar once we know the *statistical* properties of the scattering medium. We do not actually have to know what the exact shape of the interstellar 'lenses' are at any one time. As long as we record enough intensity fluctuations from the scintillating quasar, we can measure the statistical properties of the intensity fluctuations to derive information on the source structure.
But there is a complication. The ISM moves relative to the Earth with some velocity, v, and it turns out that the scintillation is most sensitive to quasar structure along the direction of v. We essentially form a one-dimensional image of source structure. Enter the Earth. As Earth orbits the Sun, its velocity changes (i.e. it changes direction), and thus so does the direction of the ISM _relative to_ Earth. As v changes direction during the course of a year, we can probe the quasar's structure along different directions. This allows us to build up a 2-d image of the source over the course of a year on microarcsecond scales.
We have dubbed this technique Earth Orbit Synthesis.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
oops, sorry, That mod was my fault. Still getting used to Mozilla.
Exit, pursued by a bear.