Catching Photons Coming from the Moon

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Friday July 14, 2006 @04:37PM from the need-better-than-a-jar dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "In 'Shooting the moon,' the San Diego Union-Tribune describes how and why physicists from UCSD are using lasers to send light pulses in direction of an array of reflectors installed on our moon in 1969 by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. One of the goals of these experiments is to check the validity of Einstein's theory of general relativity. Another one is to measure the distance between the Earth and moon with a precision of one millimeter by catching photons after their round trip to the moon. But it is amazing to realize how difficult it is to capture photons after such a trip. I also have up a summary, which contains additional details and pictures, if you just want to learn how difficult it is to capture photons back from the moon."

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Re:Snippet describing how difficult it is ... by MustardMan · 2006-07-15 02:19 · Score: 1, Offtopic

Thanks for the cut and paste... keeps people from clicking on TFA. It's bad enough that fucking advertisement troll roland gets his shit posted here on slasdot... they actually gave him a blog on zdnet now!?!?!??? Dear God, next thing you know TrollAxor will be working for Fox News (well, that might be an improvement from O'Reilley).