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Telescopes Useless by 2050?
Wellerite writes "Gerry Gilmore, from Cambridge University, has told the BBC that ground-based telescopes will be worthless by 2050. This is due to more and more cloud cover caused by climate change and increasing numbers of aircraft vapour trails. It seems to be time to start preparing to launch more orbit-based telescopes."
Most appropriate delivery of that message EVER.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
As much as I can tell, scoping out babes from a distance will continue to be the standard for Slashdotters far past 2050.
Maybe ground based telescopes will not be as efficient 50 years without taking into account advances in technology, but I doubt that they will be obsolete. And what about the huge telescopes that are being planned today? They aren't going to be built where cloud cover will make them obsolete.
Anyways, I guess a little more cloud cover and vapour trails combined with "light pollution" will make today's designs less efficient, but I can't see how there is any way that ground based telescopes will become obsolete.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
According to the article: A location has not been decided; but, despite the difficulties of access, Antarctica may become an option. The icy region has relatively clear skies, with a climate that is somewhat separate from other continents, and, crucially, is free from overflying commercial jets.
Very large electric fans.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
It seems to be time to start preparing to launch more orbit-based telescopes.
Er, yeah, let's treat the symptom and ignore the cause!
I, for one, welcome our new Alien Overclouds!!
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
I think you are a bit dim. Please be more clear.
Nothing helps a cause more than disingenuous sensationalism.
Remember, in 50 years deserts and mountains won't exist because of GLOBAL WARMING!!!!!1!
Mmmmmm. Bologna and Cheese Whiz. *Drool*
Wait, did I miss a point?
-Peter
But /. web pages have really cool colors!
While there may be problems with future air traffic growth around the world, Hawai'i may not necessarily be involved in those problems. According to this article at CNN Hawai'i is close to capacity. There may or may not be significant growth in air traffic to the islands.
Given that you need to do astronomy in the winter when there's no sun, it's probably not an issue. That and exposed skin has other problems in Antartica besides sunburn...
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
There is no way that ground-based telescopes are going to become "worthless" by 2050. This is just a false sensationalist claim intended to stir up trouble.
It is possible that cloud cover will increase in some places, and I can believe that jet contrails reduce the visibility of astronomical objects, but unless cloud cover increases to 100% over the entire surface of the earth and/or atmospheric jet travel increases by many orders of magnitudes, there will still be plenty of cloudless night sky on the planet earth in 2050.
Light pollution will probably be a bigger problem for ground based astronomy over the next 50 years.
So will a combo of bologna and cheez whiz, if you leave it out long enough...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Because... there's no other way we could ever produce energy? Are you trolling, or do you really think we'll go back to an agrarian society?
THe upside to this is of course all those massive lenses and mirrors will be coming on the market.
Evil Geniuses planning to build a super laser and extort the world for billions of dollars on a budget rejoice!
--My signature is six words long.--
Secondly, light pollution isn't just a localized problem. Light bends and reflects in the atmosphere very effectively. So much so, in fact, that the moon is still very clearly visible in a full lunar eclipse (it has a rusty brown colour) and car headlights are forever being mistaken for UFOs at a distance.
Personally, I think we should have giant space telescopes anyway. Enough of the 9' junk we call Hubble, we need a good 100' optical space telescope. The mechanisms we use to compensate for atmospheric effects should work just as well for the distortion in space due to dust and crystalline particles in interstellar clouds.
Actually, the way I'd do it is to have a set of giant space-based telescopes on a polar orbit around the moon such that they were always visible from Earth. Less atmospheric drag, so won't have as many problems as Hubble, and the orbit is much less crowded.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I have two points to make here.
One: clouds go pretty high. The telescopes on Mauna Kea in Hawaii are situated at ~14,000 feet. They get clouded out relatively frequently, roughly 20% of the time.
Two: Contrails form in the atmosphere. The atmosphere moves. Therefore contrails move, and can affect locations where there aren't any flightpaths.
In,
Pulse high energy weapons grade lasers out of the telescope to 'clear' a path to see, if they're strong enough birds, planes and satellites be damned.
seriously, this is more the sky is falling crap, shifting weather patterns will render some locations unusable while others might become better,
this has been a problem for locations such as Palomar, when it occurs they retask and/or devise a new technical method around the clutter.
I can tell you from first hand experience that amatuer astronomers will travel to great lengths to get better seeing conditions.
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
I'm one of those type of people. I don't think we need to give up our technology. I know people like that, and I think they're pretty lame. You can't maintain a large population without technology. Of course, most of those people are planning for the aftermath of a crash of civilization, not working to actually improve what we have here.
What we need to do is use our technology. There's technology decades old that we're not using today because corporations are able to lobby politicians to feed 'em pork and step on their competition for them. Rudolf Diesel ran his first demo engine on peanut oil but here we are burning dino juice. We could be using oils extracted from hydroponically grown algae - topsoil-based fuels are damaging to the environment.
However, I agree that the fat chick in the H2 is an excellent example of the conspicuous consumption that's contributing to the destruction of the biosphere. Or at least, noticable changes that are making things worse for living organisms that we're interested in, not least of all ourselves. For example, humans put out like 500 times as much CO2 as volcanoes every year. The system is self-balancing, sure, but part of that balance may involve crushing humans, if we keep going the way we're going.
The H2 is a heavy piece of shit that's good for nothing whatsoever. The best "off-road" feature is that it's got locking differentials, which you can get for just about anything that's not front wheel drive. It's just a fucked over rebadged tahoe. And being fat means you're eating too much, or the wrong things, but usually too much. Food has to come from somewhere. Agriculture has done more damage to the biosphere than anything else, ever. Egypt used to be green! And meat - which I happen to belive in - with our current methods of food production, it's horrible as well. Overgrazing leads to the depletion of native grasses which hold down the topsoil. This leads to the soil washing away into rivers. This causes the rivers to be choked with silt, causing fish to die. Once enough of the dirt washes away, it means that less rain can soak into the soil, so more of it runs off, leading to increased flooding.
Still think the fat chick in the gas-guzzling H2 is AOK?
ObDisclaimer/Disclosure: I am a 320lb. American male who occasionally eats fast food. I drive a 1981 MBZ 300SD, which is a 3500 lb turbo diesel 4-door sedan getting 25mpg real-world mileage. (I got 26.25 on my last tank, actually, but it tends to bounce between 24 and 26 depending on driving habits.) I intend to convert my fuel system to heat and inject WVO, but it's not free...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
despite the difficulties of access
You don't necessarily need to be at the telescope to control the telescope.
...but from first-hand and second-hand experience, this is definitely a problem.
My father is an artist who used to work on Air Force jets in the 50s. He's been watching the sky for 50 years, and he was one of the first in our state to even mention the problem of contrails. I don't care what you skeptics say; the farther you travel from major air traffic, the bluer the sky.
And if any of you are amateur astronomers, you probably didn't need this article to tell you about this problem. 'Seeing' has become progressively worse over the past 10 years, at least in the States. Light pollution is only part of the problem. Moisture in the high atmosphere is what we should be worried about.
Dude thankyou. Im glad someone views this the same way I do.
How much are we really learning from ground-based telescopes as opposed to satellite telescopes at this time? For real scientists (not your backyard user looking at the stars), will this really affect their current and future research?
I don't think so. There is already a push for satellite telescopes, so this development may speed up the transition, but will not be the sole incentive.
"And meat - which I happen to belive in - "
I believe in meat too, but what about the fat chick in the 1981 MBZ 300SD? Is that your girlfriend?
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
The US Government just has to make sure to seize the credit card company's computer under Eminent Domain afterwards.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
What with the use of upstairs window blinds, and one-way polymer coatings, and what not. A bloke's not half as liable to spot a bird on the wing, as in the old days, what?
But, Cor! Look at the knockers she's got!
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
"it was us who scorched the sky."
If there's observing time available on a 10-meter ground-based telescope, you'd better believe there will be competition for that observing time, and papers will be published. But if really amazing things are going to be discovered, it's probably going to come from techniques that are a big leap ahead of what we have now, like telescopes in space. Telescopes in space can have apertures as big as you like without buckling under their own weight, they can probe parts of the spectrum that don't get through the atmosphere, and they're not affected by issues like clouds and contrails.
I don't find it hard to believe that contrails could be a major issue. Every time I go backpacking and spend a lot of time in a remote spot in the Seirras looking up at the sky, that's what I see a lot of -- jet contrails. If ground-based astronomy is already being pushed to the limits of what it can do, then presumably they're often working at levels of sensitivity a gazillion orders of magnitude beyond the naked eye, so I can easily imagine that contrails that would appear to the naked eye to have completely dissipated could be an issue.
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That's a stretch. Given that an orbit is highly dynamic, how can something be "based" on it? A base implies a solid foundation: something "on orbit" most definitely is not.
What on earth is wrong with "orbiting"? (No pun intended)
Jesus, it's like listening to American TV interviews, when people say "at this time", or "at this moment" when what they mean is "now".
But I guess there a lot of people to whom brevity and clarity mean diddly squat. *sigh*
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
It's overcast and cloudy here nine months of the year, so if you want to use a telescope, you have to be really lucky, or use it during the summer months.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The safest path argument is compelling, but others are more concerned about the safest path for preserving freedom.
Sure, you'd like it cold for the sensor, but then you have worse problems.
Once you open the dome for observations, you allow outdoor air to come in contact with indoor air. You're going to get turbulence and fog. If you put a layer of glass in the middle, you get dew or even frost. (and you still get turbulence, because the glass will be either warm or cold and thus not equal to the air on one side or the other)
I think its hilarious when people keep track of fractional mpg. I am a valet, and I see brand new F350s with digital mpg gauges reading "14.95". It is like a small child telling you they are "five and three quarters years old!", such a miniscule amount that the fraction matters. I get 45 MPG (yes, 45. Not 45.1, not 45.27349.) on a mixed commute and normal daily driving, and I would get 50 if I ever bothered to have my seals replaced. Anyone driving a vehicle that gets less is being irresponsible, AND wasting money. And mostly endangering my life, but that's another matter.
Seeings as where my eyesight will be nearly gone by 2050 and my skin is too light for much sun this is the best news I've heard in a long time.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
and I predict that by 2080 earth-orbit-based telescopes will become useless due to amount of space junk and rocket exhaust vapor clouds ;)
Time to think of a solar-orbit telescope?
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
There's a fascinating document at http://caao.as.arizona.edu/publications/2004%20spi e%20plenary%20final%202.pdf
comparing and contrasting three sites for a new major telescope facility. Suffice it to say that the top of an unclimbed mountain in the middle of Antarctica is the MOST pleasant and accessible of them.
I dug all the way down to -1 to see what you had to say that elicited such a response. Glad I did, for once.
:-)
"a liberal ecofreak troll reference to the fact that us Americans are fat, wasteful, materialistic boobs"
Statistically speaking, I think that's a pretty fair statement. Americans are overweight/obese in numbers greater than any time in history and getting fatter. We are wasteful. I see people every day dumping reusable/recyclable items into the trashbin. We are materialistic, obsessed with status symbols and consumption, and we are boobs who can name more judges on American Idol than rights guaranteed by the First Ammendment.
"whose culture will eventually be the downfall of mankind."
Not until it spreads to the rest of the world it won't, but don't worry, our fundie millenarist prez is working on that.
"parent-poster-type people would feel the Earth would be much better off if we crushed all of the technology we have and return to a pre-Industrial revolution society for the good of the planet and the three flippered platypus"
Don't be so sure. Fat people driving H2s to WalMart is a long way from an example of "using" our technology. Using our technology would be using alternative energy sources and developing energy efficient means of production and transportation. Our current "technology" is controlled by the whims of fickle, cheap consumers, Madison Avenue, and industry lobbyists. There is no reason for a monstrosity like the H2 to exist, and even if I stretch my credulity to assume there is they are not being used for those reasons. They are being used by status conscious, self-obsessed twits to hustle groceries from one block to the next. The SUV industry even exploited that sense of disregard for the rest of the world in their ad campaigns. Here are a couple scenes you may remember if you've watched TV spots for SUVs: tiny tiffany bags in the cargo area, throwing a box of dog biscuits to the foot traveller threatened by wolves.
Enough. Rant off. Maybe you were just trolling, and if so, touche. Otherwise, I think you're way off the mark to assume that because someone is against pointless excess, waste, and self-obsession that they are a Luddite who wants to draw us back into a pre-industrial state.
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
sweet! then we can take the earth for ourselves, and no longer have to listen to the incessant mewling of everyone else on the planet!
Ground based telescopes will end up being for hobbyists that want to look at mars or the moon, true astronomy work will come from orbital telescopes that can peer into the far reaching depths of space. At least optical ones. Global climate changes shouldn't affect radio frequency telescopes for deep space scanning.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
One: clouds go pretty high. The telescopes on Mauna Kea in Hawaii are situated at ~14,000 feet. They get clouded out relatively frequently, roughly 20% of the time.
That means its still 300 days per year of viewing. That's not "relatively frequently" unless you compare it to the telescopes situated in the Atacama desert in Chile. It's above the inversion layer and so doesn't get "clouded out" that often. That's why the site is so important in astronomy.
Two: Contrails form in the atmosphere. The atmosphere moves. Therefore contrails move, and can affect locations where there aren't any flightpaths.
Yes and when the contrails move they disperse. The quicker the movement, the quicker the dispersal.
And your point is?
You didn't address the point made that the air in the lower troposphere is getting cleaner, nor that more cloudiness would act as a negative feedback on warming.
Oh and to the anonymous cowards who modded my reply down: a big FUCK YOU.
What you can't answer with facts, you mod down.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
Thank you for your post, it's probably the most intelligent I've read here in a long time. Most knee jerks just yell, "Crazy liberal" without every giving their opinions, that you replied to that says volumes about you. Gracias.
fak3r.com
Ground-based telescope systems are actually important, contrary to popular /. opinion. For example, Swift takes about a minute to slew its Ultraviolet and Optical Telescope (UVOT) to a gamma ray burst (GRB). When Swift first triggers on a GRB, it sends that information to the ground, which is then sent throughout the world to astronomers and robotic telescope systems alike. Those robotic systems are then observing the GRB (provided that it's night and not raining at the telescope's location) within a few seconds of Swift triggering on the GRB. Thus, they are able to observe the *early* optical and infrared afterglow, while Swift is still slewing to the GRB.
There are also cataclysmic variable surveys, transient surveys, and other uses of the robotic systems when they're not pursuing GRBs. These are far easier and cheaper to develop and deploy than space-based telescopes. Each mission has it's limitations, but there is good science to be done by each. Thinking Telescopes has more information about robotic systems and the software behind them.
So yes, the days of a professional astronomer staring through a telescope to study the stars is probably long over. But that does not mean that ground systems are obsolete or outdated. Hell with the budget cannibalization going on at NASA, astronomers are going to loose the largest means of space based missions: Explorers. So when we can't launch into space, we'll build on the ground or make balloon experiments to observe in energies that are blocked by the ozone (amazingly enough, these are still done).
And the picture they use in the bloody article is a RADIO telescope! Radio really isn't affected by contrails or climate change! The biggest concern is in the optical to infrared ranges, where the moisture and clouds do the most damage to light (diffraction, reflection, etc). Radio and microwave suffer most from cell phones, gps units, radio and television broadcasting, etc. That's why radio observatories are out in the middle of *no where*.
If I switched to a Golf TDI today, not only would I be looking at the road from between my knees because I'm 6'7", but it would probably be at least a decade before I saw any cost savings, and god knows how long before there were any energy savings.
See, someone has to build cars. They don't just coalesce out of the ether. That takes energy. We're talking about two tons (well, if it's a little shitbox VW, one ton) of steel, aluminum, copper, glass, and assorted other materials. All that stuff has to be produced somewhere and shipped to the plant where it can be assembled into a car, and all of that takes energy.
By sticking with one relatively efficient vehicle for years (this vehicle is about to hit 310,000 miles) rather than buying new cars for every little bump in automotive technology, I actually save energy. And as soon as I can get my hands on ~$1200 at once, I'm putting the Elsbett kit in my car so I can run WVO, SVO, diesel, kerosene, or whatever in a single tank.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
1 point for good reasoning.
-7 points for false assumptions.
A) My car is 12 years old, and although I haven't put quite as many miles on it as you have on yours, rest assured that it has seen more than its share.
B) It weighs well under 1 ton, with me in it.
C) It runs on gasoline, not diesel. I considered diesel alternatives when I bought it, but nothing really stood out at the time.
So you've either got a hybrid, or a motorcycle. From your comment about endangering your life, I would guess motorcycle, but you did say car. Most hybrids are pretty dinky... Hell, I wouldn't trust my life to a civic on a regular basis. An accord is pushing it already.
Well, guess what? Your batteries are subsidized by the automaker, which is willing to take a loss on them on the assumption that you will probably bring your specialized vehicle to the dealer since few non-dealer shops know how to deal with hybrid vehicles. When the batteries wear out, as they will inevitably do, they must be recycled. This process is not free! It can be cheap, it can be low-energy-use, or it can be clean, but it can't be all three and it probably can't even be two at once.
Even someone driving a Ford LTD with a carbureted V8 would have to do an awful lot of driving before buying a hybrid would even get them to the break even point.
Anyway, for the reasons I mention above (and some others) I think the TDI is about twice as good as the hybrid. The next best reason: Simplicity of the powertrain. Hybrids are smaller (for weight reduction and aerodynamics) and more complex, which translates into reduced reliability unless you make parts out of unobtainium or something. Plus, the TDI can be run on biofuels. The best you could get a gasoline hybrid to do would be run on Ethanol, which isn't very energy-dense and would reduce mileage significantly.
If I were going to go to something newer specifically for efficiency, it'd be a TDI Golf with a rollcage added :P
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
More negative points, I'll stop counting now. I drive a car, with a plain old gasoline engine, no hybrid, no extra batteries. It seems like youve got this whole prepared speech that you are just dying to give about hybrids and the superiority of driving inefficient cars, despite it having nothing to do with anything I am saying. Feel free to continue, if you ever get near the point I'll listen up.
PS: My car completely paid for itself in gas savings in less than a year. Zero net cost, and dropping into the negative every day since then. Chew on that.
You either give up your cheap trips to Majorca, or you give up astronomy. You can't do both
False dilemma ... actually you can do both. Technology is not inherently dirty - it's possible to create and use cleaner technologies.
Why not start focusing on cleaner fuels now (both for terrestrial and space travel) so those blokes stuck on the ground can keep their telescopes for more interesting pursuits than spying the fat old lady next block over?
And keep in mind, this article may not take into account that there will probably be about 2 billion more cars on the planet by then, so we could actually be looking at 2030, not 2050. (hint: invest in parking spaces in China NOW and don't say I didn't tell you so)
Just a thought.
So you've got a CRX HF or something like that? Deathtrap. They won't even need to buy you a coffin, because you'll be pre-packaged.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Other guy is wrong.
When the ice age happens, then you can call it 'climate change', but at that point, I think "Global Cooling" would still be more demonstrative.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Telescopes and astronomy are not important (and I speak as a keen amateur astronomer, with a telescope of my own) compared to the survival of mankind. Folks, we are killing ourselves - that's why this observation is important, and too serious to joke about,
Ian D. K. Kelly
idkk Consultancy Ltd.
"Quality through Thought"
No, but damn near every car under a ton is a deathtrap. Put a little thought into it, think of what they are, and you'll see. From a Fiat 1600 to a CRX, they're not crashworthy at all.
A car doesn't have to be a land yacht to be safe. In fact, the old full-frame cars are considerably less safe than a modern mid-size car, because they don't crumple. On the other hand, in a collision with one of those little peanut cars, a lot more energy transfer occurs in the smaller vehicle.
My car is a land yacht, and it's unibody. It has both advantages.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Exactly. Just like how we're running out of horses, which are needed for long-distance travel. As they decline, so does the human race.
Oh, sorry, got stuck in the late 19th century for a second there.
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531