Unbelievably Large Telescopes On the Moon?

Matt_dk writes "A team of internationally renowned astronomers and opticians may have found a way to make "unbelievably large" telescopes on the Moon. 'It's so simple,' says Ermanno F. Borra, physics professor at the Optics Laboratory of Laval University in Quebec, Canada. 'Isaac Newton knew that any liquid, if put into a shallow container and set spinning, naturally assumes a parabolic shape, the same shape needed by a telescope mirror to bring starlight to a focus. This could be the key to making a giant lunar observatory.'"

Comments

Summary is completely misleading...

[argent]

When I saw the summary I actually HOPED it would be misleading, because it makes it sound like nobody had thought of liquid mirror telescopes before. Now it's possible that they were just copying a similarly misleading article, but no... even has a nice photo of the Large Zenith Telescope to spice things up. Space Fellowship 1 - Slashdot 0.

Re:Read TFA, sounds fundamentally flawed.

[Anonymous Coward]

couldn't possibly be a lid on it to protect it from lunar dust/solar winds/micrometeorites. No possible way they'd think of that. Absolutely implausible that they'd use a static charge to repel ionized particles either, just fucking inconceivable.

Re:It WILL happen one day

[sp332]

Um, how will it transmit images back to earth, with the entire moon blocking radio transmissions?

Re:Read TFA, sounds fundamentally flawed.

[mlush]

The "liquids" to be used are less dense than water, and being placed on the lunar surface, which is covered in dust several times finer than baking powder.

I'd give it about 3-5 days (depending on the size) before the "revolving liquid mirrors" become revolving lunar mud pies.

How? Is the wind is going to blow the dust onto the mirror??

Not Dark Side

[camperdave]

we don't have to transport massive amounts of equipment to the dark side of the moon.

It's FAR SIDE people! Far Side, Far Side, Far Side. Like the cartoon. The Moon is tidally locked to Earth, so there's a Near side and a Far Side. If it were tidally locked to the Sun, then you'd have a light side and a dark side. But it's not, so we don't. There is no dark side of the moon, except for the ever changing half that's facing away from the sun at the moment.

Re:Not Dark Side

[MBGMorden]

While I generally wouldn't use the term "dark side" myself, you do realize that a lot of terms are just terms because that's what they've traditionally been called right? Just as not everyone who says "Ooh, a falling star!" really believes that it's LITERALLY a falling star, I'd hazard a guess that a lot of people who perfectly well understand that the other side of the moon isn't actually dark, would still call it the "dark side" because it's been called that for so long.

Re:Not Dark Side

[wooferhound]

There is a Dark Side . . .
but it's at the top, and inside of a crater as suggested in TFA

Re:Spin it & freeze it

[actionbastard]

In order for the 'mirror' to maintain its shape it would have to be continuously spinning during the 'freezing' phase. If it were to stop and 'settle' you would end up with a useless, slightly convex, mirror. Also, whether you find the materials necessary to manufacture the mirror on the Moon or not, the machinery to produce the mirror and the rest of the observatory need to be sent from Earth, first, which makes this a totally unfeasible, insanely expensive. proposal.
Smart science type guys do it again. "Hey, we can make 'X' for really cheap on the Moon. The only problem is that we have to get to the Moon to make it really cheap."