NASA Takes Step Forward In Planet Finding

Spy der Mann wrote to mention a piece at Physorg.com about a major breakthrough in planet finding. From the article: "On a crystal clear, star-filled night at Hawaii's Keck Observatory in Mauna Kea, NASA engineers successfully suppressed the blinding light of three stars, including the well-known Vega, by 100 times. This breakthrough will enable scientists to detect the dim dust disks around stars, where planets might be forming. Normally the disks are obscured by the glare of the starlight. Engineers accomplished this challenging feat with the Keck Interferometer, which links the observatory's two 10-meter (33-feet) telescopes. By combining light from the telescopes, the Keck Interferometer has a resolving power equivalent to a football-field sized telescope. The 'technological touchdown' of blocking starlight was achieved by adding an instrument called a 'nuller.' "

Comments

How it works - the source code of 'nuller'

[ion_]

#!/bin/sh
convert -modulate 1 "$1" "$2"

Dim stars.....

[Hao Wu]

Cruise, Penn, Madonna... Taco.

Re:You can do the same thing at home

[nick_davison]

I'll entertain all bids on this technology...

Would you be interested in going in to partnership? I have a patent pending on my "LALALALICAN'THEARYOU" sound reduction technology.

We could maybe even go further and suggest NASA license the use of celery in place of those pesky ceramic tiles that keep coming off. Seriously, that stuff is impossible to get to burn and mayo (or other dressing) often becomes incredibly tacky/adhesive after a couple of weeks - it may just have the properties they're after.

If 3M can make so much money from a glue that doesn't work, I feel that, given the right marketting, the above ideas can't help but succeed.