Slashdot Mirror
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!
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.
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.
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.'"
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
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.
Find free books.
I believe that we need to reduce pollution as much as we possibly can. That said, I am tired of people on the right and the left trying to scare people into believing their argument.
Strong regulations against pollution will not destroy America. On the other hand, the apparent warming of the Earth will not incinerate us all.
There are many people invested in the idea that we alone are to blame for this "crisis." Respected scientists publish graph after graph showing that the temperature is rising with the rise of CO2 levels. These same people ignore that Mars appears to be warming too. Maybe, just maybe, we stumbled upon a coincidence. It is time to put some focus on the Sun's luminosity.
Does this mean that we should lower emmission standards? Of course not. There are many other good reasons to ensure our air, water, and soil are clean. However, I'm tired of being told half-truths and lies. The claims of this Professor are complete nonsense and only give opponents of responsible environmentalists ammunition.
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.
Nice try, but Seeing is determined by air currents which are directly impacted by moisture and temperature in the high atmosphere. Seeing is the true limiting factor of any kind of ground-based optical observation. Transparency is not what I was talking about.
Simply put, I should not have trouble making out 2 out of 4 of the Trapezium on a perfectly clear winter night, 15 miles outside of town. But that HAS been the case, at all of my regular observation spots, whereas it was not 10 years ago.
Maybe you live in an area with better currents than me, but 50 years ago, my state had no problem with this. 50 years from now, there's a chance you'll have the same problem. Sensationalistic or no, I'll take whatever publicity I can get to make people aware of this problem. Acting as if it's a bunch of 'poppy-cock' isn't going to help.