Slashdot Mirror
UK Upgrades Radio Telescope Network
armacc writes "From the BBC, work has started to use optical fibres to link up the giant radio telescope at Jodrell Bank with five others that are scattered across England. The telescopes comprise an array called Merlin that combines the data from each so they perform as a larger telescope. The telescopes are currently linked by microwaves but replacing them with optical fibres will be a revolution. Astronomers say the new project, e-Merlin, will be a great leap in Jodrell Bank's ability to look out into space."
...(or how far out) will they be able to spy with this puppy?
The ability to see great distances requires a large number of photons to be collected (to pick up faint signals and better separate signal from noise), which requires a large aperture area. They're not getting that here, so they won't be able to see much farther.
What they _do_ get by using radio telescopes in tandem is a much larger effective aperture _diameter_, which lets them resolve finer details. What was once a blob or a point source of radio waves, now resolves into jets from an active galaxy, or what-have-you.
This doesn't require a fiber link (they're using microwave links to exchange data between the Merlin telescopes now), but a fiber link lets them transfer more data and so do the data processing a bit more efficiently. Same telescope array, better throughput (so more of the captured data can actually be analyzed).
I find it very interesting that we've come so far in the understanding of space, but we still have but scratched the surface. I would love to be able to hibernate for say 100 years, and then find out where we're at in technology, space flight and exploration.
For telescopes, you won't have to wait more than 50 years, tops. Optical intereferometric telescopes have been built that do much the same kind of thing that these radio telescopes do (huge effective aperture diameter from many smaller telescopes, letting you see relatively bright objects in fantastic resolution). Space-based ones are in the planning stages now, and will be launched well within your lifetime. This will allow us to do detailed surveys of nearby solar systems.
A sun-orbiting array of radio telescopes would also be useful, for similar goals (and to make really accurate maps of our own galaxy's interior, and give a better idea of the structure of nearby galaxies). No idea if anything like this is on the drawing board just yet. If anything, it'd be much easier than an optical array.
Technology-wise, we're likely to have mature materials and fabrication technology 100-150 years from now, either through nanotech or through more conventional synthesis techniques. That will let us build just about anything we want to that's within the theoretical limits of materials built from ordinary matter. We'll also likely have true AI. Whether the world looks like an updated version of our current one, or whether we go through a Vinge-style singularity into a very different type of world, is something our grandchildren will find out (I'd like to live that long, but I'm not going to bet on it just yet).
Rather than call it a "network of telescopes" or an array, call it by it's name, an interferometer. /., and I don't come here to have topics spoonfed to me with fourth grade vocabulary. Even the linked article refers to this "network of telescopes" by it's proper name.
The state of science journalism is bad enough, but this is
I know I'm nitpicking, but we have words for things, and we should use them!
And in an effort to be ontopic, hooray for the efficient utilization of existing resources!
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
Several observatories working together have been using glass fibre connections to make international interfermetric observations (Very Long Baseline Interferometry); this mode hase been dubbed eVLBI. This is still a pilot, but is working well. Have a look at. http://www.evlbi.org/evlbi/te017/te017.html