Slashdot Mirror
The Billion-Dollar Telescope
dcmeserve writes "As in all science, astronomers are ever searching for better technology to aid in their task. But when it comes to telescopes, nothing beats sheer bulk of light-gathering capability. This article gives a brief overview of the top contenders for the next leap forward, including
a 100-meter behemoth that is expected to run $1 billion."
The bottom line with telescopes is that anything on the ground has to look through a ton of crap in the atmosphere and battle light pollution. Much smaller telescopes in space will work a lot better. ISS should have a giant telescope mounted on it. It's a shame Hubble is our only orbiting telescope.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
The answer is, using these big telescopes, we can look back in time. Light travels at a set speed in a vacuum: approximately 186,000 miles per second. The universe is so large, however, that light (and other forms of energy such as x-rays and radio waves) that was generated a bit after the creation of the universe in the big bang is just reaching us! Now, we see (and so do optical telescopes) by filtering light generated by or bouncing off of objects. So, by looking out, as far as we can, we can literally look back in time to the creation of all that is. And that, my geeky friends, is why we need giant telescopes.
Happy Stardust/Mars days :)
This quote was attributed to R.A. Janek, and is the sentence that graces the page just before the beginning of Michael Crichton's novel "The Andromeda Strain". It would be most beneficial to science to see if we can use all of our technology to reduce the cost, even if only a little bit, from its(pardon the pun) astronomical level.
If you're going to spend a $1B on a telescope, aren't you reaching the point where the money would be better spent to put one in space away from the atmosphere and associated debris rather than sticking it on terra firma?
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Spend the $1 billion on better things. We should try and solve our own planets problems before going out into space.
Yes, the c. $400 billion being spent on the US military has a far better chance of furthering the lot of humanity. And Bush's tax cut of $1.4 trillon sure helped out all of those disadvantaged rich people.
C'mon, weigh it up: vast amounts of money are already being spent on things which are much further down the priority list than astronomy programmes. Surely it is these which should be considered ripe for cancellation, far ahead of projects which seek to understand our place in the Universe. To quote from a particularly aposite letter which appears in today's Guardian:
Abandoning endeavours of discovery because of alleged "wastefulness", whether the target be space exploration or medieval history, will not improve matters. It will only feed the underlying shallow thinking and barbarism that have created the problems in the first place.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
Please read the referenced article. All of the proposed telescopes are ground based. the people who build, maintain, and use these telescopes are also ground based. Their paychecks will be spent down here on Earth
One of the biggest problems on Earth right now is ignorance and stupidity. Spending money on increasing knowledge is a way to combat that problem.
Spending money on increasing the sum knowledge base of the entire human race is a good thing to spend money on.
Buddy, in some cultures you'd be in big trouble for uttering such disparaging comments about your authorities and leaders. But the West's culture of freedom allows you to do it. I'd say sharing that culture with oppressed people will help out humanity.
And I'm sure you're of the opinion that the improving economy following Bush's tax cut is just a coincidence, right?
It seems to me that if multiple cheaper, smaller telescopes could work together, they could do the work of a single gigantic telescope. I mean, if you combine how ever many small telescopes it takes to get the same input area as the 100m monster, then you could probably get similar power.
In IT we have known about the power of doing distributed processing for some time, perhaps we should let the astronomers in on the secret?
Someone, please, educate me on why bigger is better...(please limit your comments to the subject matter at hand).
Most writers regard truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use - Mark Twain
He was never an undergrad there. He just copied a post someone else made months ago. Please try not to encourage him, he has enough problems as it is.
'nuff said.
I don't get it. If nothing travels faster than light, how did we, i.e. the Earth, beat the light out here to be waiting to see it?
I mean, isn't one of the main idea behind the big bang is that everything was in single giant ball before it exploded, creating all the stars and galaxies?
So how does this work then? Any astrophysicsts reading slashdot today care to explain? Thanks.
From the policy side of this, though, it is the right decision (ACed as well, because the policy part is MY job). Money has to be spent on HST, because HST is up and functioning. If they turned off the money while the telescope was still working (and it is, and will be for the forseeable future) there would be a huge outcry... and a negative reaction from Congress.
Which brings me to my main point. NASA is NOT a zero sum game. The Congress LIKES the HST very much. More than it likes your project, to be blunt (whatever it is, Congress likes HST better than everything else in the Office of Space Science). If NASA were to take the money away from HST, the Congress would take that money away from them, and would probably cut more from the program as well. The popularity of HST has a spill over effect into the rest of the program. It's likely that your project owes its existence to the success of HST.
I'm sure it's frustrating to have your budget reduced continually, but attacking the successful projects at NASA is a good way to ensure those reductions in your program become permanent... Oh, and one other thing... those other projects WILL be launched. Not on schedule, perhaps, but they will be launched.
This means that those with the money (congress) like it. The administrators like it because here is a project that has made good (albeit after a bumpy start). When an administrator chooses to invest in an existing project, it is lower risk than something new.
NASA has budget problems, but please remember that a lot of it is coming from the bad decisions made on the manned space program. At the same time, without a manned program, Hubble wouldn't be there.
Lets put this into perspective, NASA in a year uses than what it takes to run the US part of the Iraq occupation for a month. I feel for your budget problems, but in reality, NASA is underfunded for what it does.