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Largest Lens Ever Discovered

K Tanmay writes "A team of Astronomers have found a natural lens capable of resolving details as fine as 10 microarcseconds across - equivalent to seeing a sugar cube on the Moon, from Earth. The lens comprises of a cloud of interstellar gas, and works on the principle of scintillation; where the clumpiness inside a cloud of gas creates a density change thus bending and focusing the light. This technique, dubbed 'Earth-Orbit Synthesis', will be first used to study black holes in distant quasars, so don't expect spectacular wallpaper replacing images. There's also an interview with Dr. Hayley Bignall, an astronomer from the Joint Institute for Very Long Baseline Interferometry in Europe (JIVE), where she discusses the concept of using interstellar scintillation to get observations that we could never measure from here on earth." Update: 02/22 18:23 GMT by T : That wikipedia link had led to the wrong place; here's the definition for arcsecond if you still want to read it.

31 of 198 comments (clear)

  1. This is so amazing! by digital_milo · · Score: 5, Funny

    They've found sugar on the MOON!!!

  2. So... by hookedup · · Score: 5, Funny

    Does this mean we can finally see the so called "landing site" on the moon? :)

    1. Re:So... by Lost+Dragon · · Score: 5, Funny

      Not unless there's a gas cloud between here and the moon. Chances are good the one hovering over L.A. doesn't count.

    2. Re:So... by kfg · · Score: 4, Funny

      Man, are you behind the times. The Moon is a hoax, in and of itself. That's why it was so easy to fake landing on it.

      Moon me baby

      KFG

  3. Why Put Sugar on the Moon? by servoled · · Score: 5, Funny

    Jeez... everyone knows that cheese and sugar have no business going together. Put a piece of sausage up there and you might have something worth looking at.

    --
    "I have a porkchop, you have a porkchop. I have a veal, you have a veal".
    1. Re:Why Put Sugar on the Moon? by 3ryon · · Score: 3, Funny

      You, my friend, have a date with destiny.

  4. Better name?? by John+Seminal · · Score: 4, Funny
    There's also an interview with Dr. Hayley Bignall, an astronomer from the Joint Institute for Very Long Baseline Interferometry in Europe (JIVE), where he discusses the concept of using interstellar scintillation to get observations that we could never measure from here on earth

    Jive? Who's running the place? The gang from What's Happening? Is Sherly still fighting with Rerun?

    Names mean something. If you look at legislation in the USA, they often try and make laws look like the opposite of what they are, like the patriot act, which takes away civil liberties. So if they want to have the name Jive, they will probably not get the same respect as if they were called Astronomy Scholarly Studies.

    --

    Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."

    1. Re: Better name?? by Black+Parrot · · Score: 5, Funny


      > Jive? Who's running the place?

      Don't complain - they originally called it the Euro-Australian Telescopic Modification Experiment.

      --
      Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
  5. Dyn-o-mite by grungebox · · Score: 5, Funny

    The astronomer is from a group called JIVE? That's whack, yo.

  6. and they join forces... by SuperBanana · · Score: 4, Funny
    have found a natural lens

    Fantastic! Now the alien people and the tin foil hat wearers can join forces- because not only is their life elsewhere in the universe, by golly, they're SPYING on us! Quick, someone phone Barbara Streisand so she can sue them for photographing her back yard.

    There's something in this for everyone, really- even the people who think the rovers are getting sabotaged. After all, when you're a futuristic-technology-wielding, hip happenin' intergalactic alien...hmm, what's the saying? Oh yeah. When you've got a gas-giant lens, the whole universe looks like an ant in need of frying.

  7. Oddly Enough by kurosawdust · · Score: 4, Funny

    In other news, the lens was found approximately three miles away from a giant on all fours combing the ground with his hands.

  8. Whoa... by Raynach · · Score: 4, Funny

    You'd have to be some kind of supreme nerd to require a lens of THAT prescription.

    --
    - A
  9. Wikipedia... by pediddle · · Score: 4, Funny

    Definition of an Arcsecond: "Quit portscanning me."

    I guess they don't slike being slashdotted?

  10. Let's Crush Wikipedia by SparafucileMan · · Score: 4, Funny

    Uh, isn't Wikipedia suffering enough from overuse and underfunding of it's bandwidth/serverload...I mean seriously, can't you editors find another site to use as a dictionary?

  11. Re:Can you see by Brian+Dennehy · · Score: 1, Funny

    No, but maybe we can finally resolve your "penis" with this lens.

  12. Re:Even with this much resolving power... by ThogScully · · Score: 3, Funny

    You don't need a lense to look out into space to find SCO's future. You need a shovel. And perhaps a few friends to speed things up.
    -N

    --
    I've nothing to say here...
  13. Re: wikipedia by Black+Parrot · · Score: 5, Funny


    > alright, who's the joker wo updated wiki?!

    The page history shows it to be some loser by the name of 12.216.3.69.

    --
    Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
  14. Re:Very Large Array by Sevn · · Score: 4, Funny

    I remember seeing a photo of this array as a child. Back then it only had five dishes. I had no idea that it had been filled out.

    You'll find this happens as telescope arrays approach puberty. The once flat areas become curvy and full. Sweat glands start up production in earnest requiring a discussion about the importance of deodorant. Pretty soon your array will want a training bra requiring a trip to the mall.

    --
    For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
  15. I know this guy! by twoslice · · Score: 0, Funny
    In other news, the lens was found approximately three miles away from a giant on all fours combing the ground with his hands.

    His name is bloodnut the flatulent.

    --

    From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
  16. Imagine... by mav[LAG] · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...a globular cluster of these!

    --
    --- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
  17. This just in... by Frennzy · · Score: 3, Funny

    The giant, intergalactic being wearing the lense has been identified as one 'Hans Moleman'...

  18. The "Moon": A Ridiculous Liberal Myth by AEton · · Score: 5, Funny
    Right on, brother. Slashdot herself has offered proof of this hypothesis.

    It amazes me that so many allegedly "educated" people have fallen so quickly and so hard for a fraudulent fabrication of such laughable proportions. The very idea that a gigantic ball of rock happens to orbit our planet, showing itself in neat, four-week cycles -- with the same side facing us all the time -- is ludicrous. Furthermore, it is an insult to common sense and a damnable affront to intellectual honesty and integrity. That people actually believe it is evidence that the liberals have wrested the last vestiges of control of our public school system from decent, God-fearing Americans (as if any further evidence was needed! Daddy's Roommate? God Almighty!)

    Documentaries such as Enemy of the State have accurately portrayed the elaborate, byzantine network of surveillance satellites that the liberals have sent into space to spy on law-abiding Americans. Equipped with technology developed by Handgun Control, Inc., these satellites have the ability to detect firearms from hundreds of kilometers up. That's right, neighbors .. the next time you're out in the backyard exercising your Second Amendment rights, the liberals will see it! These satellites are sensitive enough to tell the difference between a Colt .45 and a .38 Special! And when they detect you with a firearm, their computers cross-reference the address to figure out your name, and then an enormous database housed at Berkeley is updated with information about you.

    Of course, this all works fine during the day, but what about at night? Even the liberals can't control the rotation of the Earth to prevent nightfall from setting in (only Joshua was able to ask for that particular favor!) That's where the "moon" comes in. Powered by nuclear reactors, the "moon" is nothing more than an enormous balloon, emitting trillions of candlepower of gun-revealing light. Piloted by key members of the liberal community, the "moon" is strategically moved across the country, pointing out those who dare to make use of their God-given rights at night!

    Yes, I know this probably sounds paranoid and preposterous, but consider this. Despite what the revisionist historians tell you, there is no mention of the "moon" anywhere in literature or historical documents -- anywhere -- before 1950. That is when it was initially launched. When President Josef Kennedy, at the State of the Union address, proclaimed "We choose to go to the moon", he may as well have said "We choose to go to the weather balloon." The subsequent faking of a "moon" landing on national TV was the first step in a long history of the erosion of our constitutional rights by leftists in this country. No longer can we hide from our government when the sun goes down.

    --
    We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
    1. Re:The "Moon": A Ridiculous Liberal Myth by Gilmoure · · Score: 2, Funny

      These satellites are sensitive enough to tell the difference between a Colt .45 and a .38 Special!

      Do you mean a revolver firing .45 Colt or a Colt Model 1911 semi-auto pistol firing .45 ACP? And what about .38 super? I have a 1911 that's chambered in .38 Super. Would that confuse those fascist liberals?

      --
      I drank what? -- Socrates
  19. Re: "The Moon": A Ridiculous Liberal Myth by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    I simply refuse to put up with limp, Satanic, fellow-travelling shit like this piece of sub-human garbage in your pewling, idiotic post:

    "Even the liberals can't control the rotation of the Earth to prevent nightfall from setting in (only Joshua was able to ask for that particular favor!) "

    Let's count the errors, shall we?
    1. The Earth does not "rotate". If it did, we would all be blown around ten ways to Tuesday by the winds created.
    2. If the Earth did rotate, then one would expect to see tornadoes in the area at the centre of rotation. This would imply that Kansas is the centre of the Earth, a thought pleasing to my personal sympathies, but contradicted by scripture. There has never been a tornado in Jerusalem!
    3. Joshua asked Our Lord to stop the Sun, you ignorant asshole, not the Earth. What possible good would it have done to stop the Earth from moving?
    4. Your blasphemous statement that the Moon "reflects" light from the Sun directly contradicts Genesis 3:16, in which it is made perfectly clear that "he created the moon, that the slimy crawling things by night might see". Which part of "he created", don't you understand? Your pathetic advocacy of the fraudulent theory (and it IS a THEORY, not some bourgeois, East-Coast elitist idea of a "fact") is sickening.

    Your evil whinings are, quite frankly, tantamount to liberalism.

  20. Re:Grammar is _never_ offtopic. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    At the risk of being inscansipitory.

    That is an independant clause.

    "The clumpiness inside a cloud of gas creates a density change thus bending and focusing the light." is a complete sentence, perhaps not a very good one....

    "Where" in this case is used to more closely connect the two ideas. In a manner not too dissimilar from "; however,". You were right, there is a comma missing. You were also mostly wrong. The semicolon is proper in this case, and you misidentified a clause.

    So for failing grammer nazi training, please go shoot yourself in the head, with a firearm.

  21. Re:Very Large Array by niew · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hey you, second from the far right, Get with the programme!

  22. The final proof by Barkmullz · · Score: 3, Funny


    The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
    "But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
    "Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
    "Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets killed on the next zebra crossing.


    Replace Babel fish with natural lens capable of resolving details as fine as 10 microarcseconds across

    --
    Ronald said nothing. He flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse, and rode madly off in all directions.
  23. Eliminating the Observable Universe by handy_vandal · · Score: 2, Funny

    The earth is at the center of the observable universe, pretty much by definition. Unless of course the observer in question isn't on the earth.

    Good point.

    Of course, the problem of the "what constitutes the observable universe?" is easily resolved by smartly knocking the observer upside the head with a telescope.

    -kgj

    --
    -kgj
  24. Re:Can you see by Crypto+Gnome · · Score: 2, Funny

    No, but maybe we can finally resolve your "penis" with this lens.

    Bad science there duude, you're already assuming it exists before having found it.

    --
    Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
  25. Observe our own history by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    All we need now is to find a large reflecting object at a distance of a 1000 light years and we can observe our own history while looking through this telescope and see if the Romans had invented sugar cubes before us. Its time we got some concrete observations about what the Romans did for us.

  26. In other news, by mbstone · · Score: 2, Funny

    SPECTRE has announced that Ernst Stavro Blofeld has successfully aligned the interstellar-gas lens with the stellar diamond and it is now focused at major population centers on Earth. World governments are attempting to come up with the ransom. More at 11.......