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NASA Poised To Topple a Planet-Finding Barrier (nextbigfuture.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the new-and-improved dept.

schwit1 shares a report from NextBigFuture.com: Babak Saif and Lee Feinberg at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, have shown for the first time that they can dynamically detect subatomic- or picometer-sized distortions -- changes that are far smaller than an atom -- across a five-foot segmented telescope mirror and its support structure. Collaborating with Perry Greenfield at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, the team now plans to use a next-generation tool and thermal test chamber to further refine their measurements. The measurement feat is good news to scientists studying future missions for finding and characterizing extrasolar Earth-like planets that potentially could support life. To find life, these observatories would have to gather and focus enough light to distinguish the planet's light from that of its much brighter parent star and then be able to dissect that light to discern different atmospheric chemical signatures, such as oxygen and methane. This would require a super-stable observatory whose optical components move or distort no more than 12 picometers, a measurement that is about one-tenth the size of a hydrogen atom.

66 comments

  1. shoah 'nuff by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    Babak Saif and Lee Feinberg at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt have shown...

    I won't believe it until we see the gentiles replicate these findings. #MAGA #HopeHicksMILFPorn

    APK

    PS==>Hillary and Obummer for Prison

  2. Space based? by pablo_max · · Score: 0

    I am clearly no astrophysicist, but would it not be more effective to stick 4 or 5 hubble sized optical telescopes working as one large one in the L1 or L2 points?
    I know that it is more expensive, but with the cost of launches dropping as fast as they are, I should imagine this would be affordable by the time they can actually build the things.. which I guess is at least 10 years.
    Ideally they would put a research lab there as well.

    1. Re:Space based? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      Well, I don't really mind how this is implemented. The important point for me is that we can find a new home for creimer and send him there where he can be happy.

    2. Re: Space based? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      I guess you haven't heard of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

      Now launching in 2019 unfortunately. :-/

    3. Re:Space based? by Zorpheus · · Score: 1

      I think that's what this is about - making multiple telescopes work together. To get a high resolution from that the light has to interfere. The more accurate ths interference is controlled, the more accurate the image can be.

    4. Re:Space based? by idji · · Score: 3, Informative

      You've basically described the James Web Telescope, it has 18 such mirrors. It's IR, but that is optical for cosmological distances.

    5. Re:Space based? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Even 5 Hubbles (2.5 meter mirror) would not match up to telescopes with mirrors up to 40 meters diameter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_large_telescope

    6. Re:Space based? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You have to match phase, image size and orientation of each scope so it is easier to just put multiple mirrors together in one structure. A research lab connected to the scope is a very bad idea. Aiming the scope costs reaction mass and getting the base out of the way would just cost more. Vibration and outgassing would also be problematic.

    7. Re:Space based? by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 3, Informative

      To make multiple telescopes work together "working as one large one", you have to control the positions of their mirrors relative to each other to a small fraction of a wavelength. That's what this is about.

      I'm not sure what they need picometer accuracy for, though. That seems more than the requirement.

      --
      http://www.geoffreylandis.com
  3. Perhaps they will explain gravity by paradigmsareconstruc · · Score: -1, Troll

    One straightforwardly physical way to explain gravity is as a distortion of electron orbitals, similar to what is seen with the van der waals force. If atoms were to simply resonate with one another, and if electrons had sub-particles, that would seem to be a pretty good theoretical basis for explaining gravity as related to E&M.

    From Quantum Generations: A History of Physics in the Twentieth Century, Helge Kragh

    "ELECTRON THEORY AS A WORLDVIEW

    By 1904 the electromagnetic view of the world had taken off and emerged as a highly attractive substitute for the mechanical view that was widely seen as outdated, materialistic, and primitive. As an indication of the strength of the new theory, it was not only discussed in specialized journals, but also began to appear in physics textbooks ...

    In commemoration of the centenary of the United States' purchase of the Louisiana Territory, a Congress of Arts and Sciences was held in St. Louis in September 1904. Among the physics delegates were several international leaders of physics, including Rutherford, Poincare, and Boltzmann. The general message of many of the addresses was that physics was at a turning point and that electron theory was on its way to establishing a new paradigm in physics. In his sweeping survey of problems in mathematical physics, Poincare spoke of the 'general ruin of the principles' that characterized the period. Poincare was himself an important contributor to electron theory and he was now willing to conclude that 'the mass of the electrons, or, at least of the negative electrons, is of exclusively electro-dynamic origin ... [T]here is no mass other than electro-dynamic inertia' (Sopka and Moyer 1986, 292). The address of another French physicist, thirty-two-year-old Paul Langevin, was more detailed, but no less grand, no less eloquent, and no less in favor of the electromagnetic world picture. Langevin argued for his own (and Bucberer's) model of the electron, but the detailed structure of the electron was not what really mattered. The important thing was the coming of a new era of physics. As Langevin explained in his closing words:

    'The rapid perspective which I have just sketched is full of promises, and I believe that rarely in the history of physics has one had the opportunity of looking either so far into the past or so far into the future. The relative importance of parts of this immense and scarcely explored domain appears different to-day from what it did in the preceding century: from the new point of view the various plans arrange themselves in a new order. The electrical idea, the last discovered, appears to-day to dominate the whole, as the place of choice where the explorer feels he can found a city before advancing into new territories .... The actual tendency, of making the electromagnetic ideas to occupy the preponderating place, is justified, as I have sought to show, by the solidity of the double base on which rests the idea of the electron [the Maxwell equations and the empirical electron] ... Although still very recent, the conceptions of which I have sought to give a collected idea are about to penetrate to the very heart of the entire physics, and to act as a fertile germ in order to crystallize around it, in a new order, facts very far removed from one another ... This idea has taken an immense development in the last few years, which causes it to break the framework of the old physics to pieces, and to overturn the established order of ideas and laws in order to branch out again in an organization which one foresees to be simple, harmonious, and fruitful' (ibid., 230)

    Evaluations similar to Langevin's, and often using the same code words and imagery, can be found abundantly in the literature around 1905. They rarely included references to quantum theory or the new theory of

    1. Re:Perhaps they will explain gravity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You Sir, are a crackpot.
      ".... If atoms were to simply resonate with one another, and if electrons had sub-particles..." ...if if if...
      Electrons are Leptons; they _are_ fundamental particles. There is no room in the Standard Model otherwise. Quoting century old speculations doesn't change that; we've moved on, and nobody seriously has any interest in your whackadoodle Electric Universe ramblings. (Archimedes Plutonium was more fun...)

    2. Re:Perhaps they will explain gravity by rgbatduke · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yeah, and then they went and discovered that pesky neutron. Oh, and quantum mechanics. And don't forget, quantum field theory, an absolute plethora of particles, neutrinos, and both special and general relativity! But even before these developments drove a stake firmly through the heart of "gravity as electromagnetism in disguise", as you note:

      Attempts to unify the two basic forces of the universe, usually by reducing gravitation to electromagnetism, was part of the electromagnetic program, but in spite of much work, no satisfactory solution was found.

      Now, of course, just because they didn't find a satisfactory solution doesn't mean that there isn't one. However, in the meantime, solutions that ARE satisfactory have been obtained that describe gravitation as an interaction that is very much not reducible to E&M, or as curvature of space-time by mass-energy that need not be (and in the literal bulk of cases, the quark-quark interactions that govern nucleons and nuclear binding energies, is not) electrodynamic in origin. While I agree that to a large extent particle "mass" is the self-energy of its local field structure and might end up ALL being field energy in the end (once we unify field theory properly and completely), there are more fields than just gravitation and electromagnetism and more elementary particles than just electrons and "nuclei", which is about all that was known in 1904. Also, Maxwell's Equations simply don't have any ROOM for gravitation, with or without magnetic charges (symmetric completion). Whatever the TOE turns out to be, it (almost certainly) isn't "just" going to be MEs classical or quantum or QED tied to ELECTRONS. You see, sir, there are those pesky definitely-not-an-electron neutron, neutrino, muon, quark, photon, gluon, heavy vector boson thingies, many of which we can directly "see" in modern collider experiments, others which we can almost directly infer (quarks BOTH from structure AND from observations of jets).

      And then there is the Higgs particle, which has possibly maybe mostly been seen but which awaits a few more sigma and which (sigh) sure, might turn out to be a chimera once again. But it is a pretty compelling theory and it, not MEs, does appear to provide an explanation for mass.

      Perpetuation of an old idea in the teeth of all of the evidence accrued in the meantime that it was incorrect requires a sort of wilful blindness and is indeed the sign of either a crackpot or a troll. OR you could just be kidding on the trollish side of things, but reposting an old thing from well over 100 years ago... really?

      --
      Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
    3. Re:Perhaps they will explain gravity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      One straightforwardly physical way to explain gravity is as a distortion of electron orbitals

      Then why is there gravity on a neutron star?

    4. Re:Perhaps they will explain gravity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A great, succint well-written explanation of the state of the TOE, that I should know more about but don't/have forgotten since doing my Physics degree.

      Thank you, rgbatduke

    5. Re:Perhaps they will explain gravity by charliemerritt03 · · Score: 2

      I would like an explanation of how we can talk of 1/10 diameter of a hydrogen atom. I have read similar dimensions in talk of how far the mirrors in LIGO wiggle. Less than the smallest atom, so, using STUFF how do you measure things smaller than, than, stuff? I presume it is an average of all atoms in the mirror, but still

    6. Re:Perhaps they will explain gravity by rgbatduke · · Score: 1

      Me too. But then we'd have to RTFA, right? And sadly, I have to teach instead.

      I'm guessing that they use something like embedded nanoscale electronic devices that are sensitive to surface expansion/contraction or the like. I could see measuring a change in capacitance at that scale as the separation between plates varies, or piezoelectric responses ditto. After all, atoms themselves are very rigid, so actually compressing one to 90% of its ordinary diameter requires a LOT of energy on that scale -- there is energy to work with.

      I'm also guessing that they do not use any sort of wave -- it would have to be fairly high energy gamma rays to have that sort of wavelength.

      But then, we should RTFA.

      --
      Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
    7. Re:Perhaps they will explain gravity by paradigmsareconstruc · · Score: 0

      If the Earth was just an inch from the Sun, the next nearest star would be 4 MILES away. Mainstream science wants us to believe that they can sprinkle in some invisible, hypothetical matter into this intervening chasm, and suddenly the weakest force -- gravity -- will become the universe's organizing force.

      People are not trolls for doubting the original assumptions and starting-point hypotheses which got us to this point; those ideas were conceived almost entirely before any in situ measurements of space were made, at a time when space was widely assumed to be empty. When we sent the first rockets to space, it was immediately admitted that a huge mistake had been made.

      A Popular Science interview in 1963 with James van Allen plainly states at the top of page 76 in big bold letters:

      "'Space' was invented on Earth before we knew what was out there"

      Dark matter detectors have become a million times more sensitive in recent years, but none has been found. We have had some of the world's smartest people on this problem for a very long time now.

      These ideas are approaching a reckoning, but the people here on Slashdot treat them the exact same as they did when I visited this forum a full decade ago -- as if these null results mean nothing for the chances of dark matter's eventual discovery, and as if there is no need to second-guess the judgments, mistaken assumptions or starting-point hypotheses which took this community to this point.

    8. Re:Perhaps they will explain gravity by paradigmsareconstruc · · Score: 0

      Re: "Perpetuation of an old idea in the teeth of all of the evidence accrued in the meantime that it was incorrect requires a sort of wilful blindness and is indeed the sign of either a crackpot or a troll. OR you could just be kidding on the trollish side of things, but reposting an old thing from well over 100 years ago... really?"

      Each of the ideas you've presented here were arrived at through a process of viewing the world through the lens of the existing theoretical structure. A community which cannot extricate itself from the theories it discusses sufficient to actually question them -- in other words, transcend the subject-object barrier as a matter of routine -- has lost the ability to use science as a tool for thinking.

      Science either HAS YOU, or you HAVE IT.

      And by that I mean that questioning assumptions is not an indication of a person who is deranged, but is actually a crucial part of thinking about scientific concepts, and where we see people labeling such behaviors as "crackpots" or "trolls", something is very wrong with the culture which took us to this point. And we can probably even link the failure to find dark matter to this larger culture which is doing all of the labeling. These things are not all unrelated, by chance. It is not an accident that we are approaching this dead-end in cosmology, and that everybody in this community pretends as though everybody must continue thinking in the same exact manner, all in unison, collectively, towards this dead-end.

    9. Re:Perhaps they will explain gravity by PPH · · Score: 2

      One straightforwardly physical way to explain gravity is as a distortion of electron orbitals

      Nope. Simple though experiment:

      All EM fields are constrained to curved of space time. A side effect of this is that none of these fields may cross the event horizon of a black hole from the inside. No fields or particles inside can get out. Except gravity. Because how else would a black hole work? If gravity were some manifestation of electromagnetism, then the matter inside the black hole (from a collapsed start, for example) would not be able to influence matter on the outside. And this is clearly not the case, as evidence for the existence of black holes is their gravitational effect on external objects.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
    10. Re:Perhaps they will explain gravity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      One straightforwardly physical way to explain gravity is as a distortion of electron orbitals

      Then why is there gravity on a neutron star?

      Because they're really distorted.

    11. Re:Perhaps they will explain gravity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hmm, a decade long Slashdot member there... with a seven digit UID...

      This fucking weirdo doesn't even understand basic Scientific Method, from his most recent balderdash posted elsewhere:
      "It must be emphasized that although these online warriors superficially “defend science,” what they are actually defend- ing it against are some of science’s most cherished attributes: its willingness to admit that it has been wrong, and its propensity for innovation and change in the light of newer ideas rooted in more recent observations and experimental results."

      No, Bozo, the Scientific Method doesn't declare Science is "Wrong", it declares that when it isn't "Complete", it is "Incomplete". Newton wasn't necessarily wrong when he decided that there were Seven Primary Colors; that he basically founded Spectroscopy is worthy enough. His choice of Seven Colors was based on Astrology, which had as yet had to properly separated from the real Science of Astronomy. His understanding was Incomplete, as was Brewster when he proposed Three Primary Colors, based on some basic misunderstandings of Human vision. (There are no such things as Primary Colors, just a spread of Photons with specific Wavelengths/Frequencies/Energies. That we can visually derive White from RGB is because our Eyes are gullible.)
      Galileo also had his problems with Tides, and he based his advocacy of various still theoretical explanations for Planetary Orbits on the concept that the Earth's Tides are solely effected by the Sun; the Moon had little or no effect. (He was the first Butt Head Astronomer.) The Moon is pretty much solely responsible for Earth's Tides, but Galileo didn't have the knowledge yet to deduce that. (Recently, measurements are sensitive enough to tease out the effect of Jupiter on the Tides, but it is very small.)

      "Popular Science" as a reliable source is right up there with "Vogue"; although Vogue usually had better Photographers. But note that the van Allen quote is of course taken out of context. Van Allen went on to note the new things out there being discovered because we had better tools and information; the Science was more Complete. Anyway Space was full of odd things, as anybody who had been bonked on the head by a Meteorite would attest. But this is what happens when you have Butt Head Readers of "Popular Science" completely failing to grasp the concept of a Metaphor.
      The old joke about people laughing at Bozo the Clown applies here. If people laugh at and ridicule preposterous claims based on the "Electric Universe", it's because we find the persistently delusional, and increasingly paranoid, intrinsically funny. Now the thing with Arkie, and his "Plutonium Totality", was not only he funny, he also didn't take it too personally. When he discovered who I worked with, I sent him a couple of Souvenirs, including a "106" Periodic Table signed by Seaborg. I also told him that the stories of the Fire alarm Bell, and of Al inhaling a Helium Cooled Curium Target were true.
      I'm pretty sure that Arkie didn't take my further comment that Al's voice was now pitched an octave higher seriously.

    12. Re:Perhaps they will explain gravity by ceoyoyo · · Score: 1

      Using photons.

      LIGO is effectively a big laser tape measure. You split a laser beam and send it down each arm where it hits a mirror and comes back. The beams will interfere constructively if they've travelled the same distance, less so if the distances differed by some fractional multiple of a wavelength.

      If you're not sensitive to small enough changes with that, you make the arms longer or bounce the beam up and down them more than once.

    13. Re:Perhaps they will explain gravity by rgbatduke · · Score: 2

      Well, or...

      You could consider existing science as the solution to a complex optimization problem in a very large dimensionality, where what you are trying to optimize is the probability that your whole interconnected network of beliefs is correct.

      In which case, while I absolutely agree that one should remain skeptical of the existing set of best beliefs, and while there is no doubt that there have in the past and no doubt will be in the future major rearrangements or even paradigm shifts, there remains the simple fact that a) new ideas (like relativity and quantum mechanics) tend to embrace their predecessors and preserve their functionality in the appropriate domain; and b) THEY ARE EVIDENCE BASED. In the end, advancing hypotheses that have been soundly rejected by oh, a century's worth of work is just plain crazy.

      This is for very good reason. In order to be credible, a "new" theory has to completely embrace everything that the old theory gets right AND get some new stuff right. Things like neutrons, neutrinos, atomic structure, nuclear structure, the actual particles observed to be created by nuclear collisions, and ever so much more.

      In the meantime, maybe you should try to understand things like Gauss's Law and 1/r^2 force laws (and their underlying geometry) vs atoms "resonating together" sort of like the completely quantum mechanical DIPOLE INDUCED DIPOLE interaction seen in the SHORT range Van der Waals force. Until you do, it is difficult for me to even begin to explain why your assertion is absurd, and the "documentary evidence" supporting it, all from right BEFORE the major paradigm shifts that generated modern physics as we now best understand it, is utterly irrelevant and incorrect.

      I also have no idea what "dead end" you are referring to in cosmology, and what your evidence is for considering the observations coupling gravitation to mass, which date back to Galileo, and the even stronger evidence coupling electrodynamics to not mass but charge, to be fundamentally incorrect. Note that I'm not addressing the difficulty reconciling general relativity, newtonian gravity, and quantum mechanics, because your remarks above seem to have nothing whatsoever to do with that, and because your proposed solution isn't even an ACTUAL proposed solution. That would require the support of a hell of a lot of real math and the demonstration that the new theory embraces the old and has actual quantitative explanatory power as well as direct evidentiary support, none of which exist.

      --
      Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
  4. I can't wait... by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 1

    to find planets we'll never be able to reach! ;)

    Actually, with nanites to repair our bodies after being frozen for transport, we should be able to get to some of these planets in millions of years. However, you got to figure that homo-superior will be exterminating the last of our kind by then so we'll probably get exploded during transport.

    What a great time to be alive! ;)

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    1. Re:I can't wait... by mentil · · Score: 1

      If intelligent life 15 light years away can give us schematics for FTL drives, we could go there within a lifetime. That's a pretty good reason to invest in telescopes that can find life. Although if they detected a signal we sent them, they'd probably just come here first, since we probably wouldn't detect a FTL data signal if we were sent one.

      --
      Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
    2. Re:I can't wait... by religionofpeas · · Score: 2

      If intelligent life 15 light years away can give us schematics for FTL drives, we could go there within a lifetime

      There are maybe 100 stars within a 15 light year radius, and the chance that any of them happen to have intelligent life right at this moment is very slim.

    3. Re: I can't wait... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And the chance that any of them has FTL technology is zero.

    4. Re:I can't wait... by Baron_Yam · · Score: 1

      >If intelligent life 15 light years away can give us schematics for FTL drives

      Then we have proof that either the Laws of Nature vary with location (because FTL is absolutely impossible here), or an alien prankster has control of the transmitter.

    5. Re:I can't wait... by Baron_Yam · · Score: 3, Interesting

      >to find planets we'll never be able to reach!

      It is entirely possible there are 'habitable' planets within reach of our technology - if we're willing to invest in building a heavily redundant generation ship and live forever in domes when we arrive at the destination, totally dependent on advanced technology for survival.

      If I were a gambler, I'd say finding a Mars-equivalent would be like hitting the jackpot...

    6. Re:I can't wait... by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 2

      There are maybe 100 stars within a 15 light year radius, and the chance that any of them happen to have intelligent life right at this moment is very slim.

      Let's say there are exactly 100 stars within a 15 light year radius. Going by the process of elimination, we already know there's only 99 of those stars which could contain intelligent life around them.

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    7. Re:I can't wait... by DontBeAMoran · · Score: -1

      As Einstein said, it's all relative.

      Let's say you have a Dyson ring. Put a track on the inside of it. On that track, another Dyson ring. And on that second inside track, a train.

      If that train achieves 0.6 light speed and the ring below it rotates at 0.6 light speed, it means nothing on its own is going faster than the speed of light and yet the train is going at 1.2 light speed when measured against the outer ring.

      Even if 0.6 light speed is not achievable for either the train or the rings, just add more rings until the train goes above light speed compared to the outermost ring.

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    8. Re:I can't wait... by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 3, Funny

      It is entirely possible there are 'habitable' planets within reach of our technology - if we're willing to invest in building a heavily redundant generation ship and live forever in domes when we arrive at the destination, totally dependent on advanced technology for survival.

      You never heard of atmosphere processors? It's a one terawatt fusion reactor power plant, about 1500 metres in height, manufactured by Weyland Corp.

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    9. Re:I can't wait... by religionofpeas · · Score: 5, Interesting

      yet the train is going at 1.2 light speed when measured against the outer ring.

      No, it's going 0.88235 light speed when measured against the outer ring, because you have to apply the Lorentz transformation when adding relativistic speeds. The relative velocity of any two objects can never exceed the speed of light no matter how clever you set it up.

    10. Re:I can't wait... by Gavagai80 · · Score: 1

      There are maybe 100 stars within a 15 light year radius, and the chance that any of them happen to have intelligent life right at this moment is very slim.

      That depends on how long intelligent life typically lasts on a planet (as well as how often it evolves in the first place). Maybe it's typical for intelligent life to last billions of years. We don't know enough to say if it's likely or unlikely. The fact that we're a young species tells us nothing.

      --
      This space intentionally left blank
    11. Re:I can't wait... by GoTeam · · Score: 1

      One question, will the message containing the schematics for the FTL drives end in "this is not a drill"?

    12. Re:I can't wait... by MiniMike · · Score: 1

      Frame of reference error. If the train achieves 0.6 C, and the ring below it is accelerated to 0.6 C, then the train would be stationary compared to that ring. The energy required to accelerate the train further is not dependent on the arbitrary speed of the ring below it. The train will not be able to reach C regardless of how many rings are stacked below it. If the ring were spun in the opposite direction as the train was traveling an observer on the ring could approach the train at a speed subjectively greater than C, without either actually going over C (like two cars on the highway at 50 mph in opposite directions are approaching at 100 mph- had to put a car analogy in).

    13. Re:I can't wait... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      There are maybe 100 stars within a 15 light year radius, and the chance that any of them happen to have intelligent life right at this moment is very slim.

      Let's say there are exactly 100 stars within a 15 light year radius. Going by the process of elimination, we already know there's only 99 of those stars which could contain intelligent life around them.

      As has just been proven by this logic/maths. ;-)

    14. Re:I can't wait... by mark-t · · Score: 1

      We don't even necessarily need FTL. to do it in a human lifetime... we could also take advantage of time dilation at speeds close to that of the speed of light to make journeys that might take many hundreds or even thousands of years in what is easily the lifespan of those on board the ship. I do not anticipate that a technology which might make that feasible would be discovered anytime this century.

      --
      File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
    15. Re:I can't wait... by religionofpeas · · Score: 1

      Maybe it's typical for intelligent life to last billions of years

      We've already seen the rise and fall of two dozen major civilizations here on Earth, so I wouldn't put my money on us surviving billions of years in a state capable enough to support interstellar communications.

    16. Re:I can't wait... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Indeed, the GPs post just explains how much they didn't understand Special Relativity.

    17. Re:I can't wait... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What's wrong with his logic/maths?

    18. Re:I can't wait... by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

      Damnit AC, I'm a Web Monkey, not a physicist!

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    19. Re:I can't wait... by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

      That's the Lazarus Long method (of Robert Heinlein fame) of breaking the light barrier -- get right up next to it then give 'er the gun!

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    20. Re:I can't wait... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Im not yet convinced there is much net intelligent life on earth, going by the amount of stupid coming from Trumpers.

    21. Re:I can't wait... by silverdirk · · Score: 1

      If you want a quick working model of relativity, consider that you measure speed as distance per time. The trick is that as you observe things going different speeds from you, your time scale is different from theirs. You could be observing two objects travelling opposite direction at nearly light speed and say "they passed eachother at nearly 2x light speed" but neither object was passing you at faster than light speed, and from the relative perspective of each object, the thing that passed them was not above light speed because they perceive time at a slower rate than you.

      I'm also not a physicist, but I'm pretty sure we could get lots of places farther than 15 light years "in the space of our lifetime" if we were able to accelerate to nearly the speed of light, since time would nearly stop for the ones making the journey. We would be "frozen" just by virtue of relative speed, without all that temperature freezing cell destruction hassle.

      Can a knowledgable physicist confirm my other thought, that in the relative frame of a photon itself, no time passes at all between the time it is emitted and absorbed no matter how far it traveled? So if we had a way to convert our entire bodies into light and back, we would experience instantaeous transportation no matter how far we travelled?

      --
      Mark of the Coder fades from you. You perform Opening on World of Warcraft. Warcraft crits GPA for 4. GPA dies.
    22. Re:I can't wait... by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      We don't actually know that FTL is absolutely impossible. It's just as possible as time travel backwards, and not everyone's convinced that's impossible.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    23. Re:I can't wait... by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      If a train is going 0.6c relative to a ring going 0.6c relative to me, I'm not going to see the train going faster than light. Velocities don't add like that in Special Relativity. Similarly, you can't do anything to see anything coming at you faster than the speed of light. If those 50mph cars were actually doing 0.5c, they wouldn't be doing the speed of light approaching each other.

      Special Relativity isn't that hard once you realize that "simultaneous" and "when" and "where" aren't defined by anything except frame of reference.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    24. Re:I can't wait... by painandgreed · · Score: 1

      I'm also not a physicist, but I'm pretty sure we could get lots of places farther than 15 light years "in the space of our lifetime" if we were able to accelerate to nearly the speed of light, since time would nearly stop for the ones making the journey. We would be "frozen" just by virtue of relative speed, without all that temperature freezing cell destruction hassle.

      Can a knowledgable physicist confirm my other thought, that in the relative frame of a photon itself, no time passes at all between the time it is emitted and absorbed no matter how far it traveled? So if we had a way to convert our entire bodies into light and back, we would experience instantaeous transportation no matter how far we travelled?

      To the first paragraph, yes, given say 1G constant acceleration and deceleration, time dilation comes into play. The longer you accelerate, the slower the spaceship time goes compared to the rest of the universe. It approaches an asymptote which effectively means the spaceship can reach anyplace within it's Hubble limit by a maximum time. IIRC, that time is around 24 years.

      It's hard to say how a photon experiences time. It has a frequency and that can change due to various reasons, however, it doesn't really decay or change to something else without being absorbed and re-emitted. From what I can tell there is a theoretical half life which would give an idea that photons do experience time, but that theoretical half life is something like 100 million times the current lifetime of the universe.

    25. Re:I can't wait... by painandgreed · · Score: 1

      It is entirely possible there are 'habitable' planets within reach of our technology - if we're willing to invest in building a heavily redundant generation ship and live forever in domes when we arrive at the destination, totally dependent on advanced technology for survival.

      You never heard of atmosphere processors? It's a one terawatt fusion reactor power plant, about 1500 metres in height, manufactured by Weyland Corp.

      For Mars, there's not really enough atmosphere to process, so what they really need is a smelter. it would take the iron, silicon, and aluminium oxides that are common on the planet and process them into building materials while pumping oxygen into the atmosphere. Other gases such as hydrogen and nitrogen would probably have to be shipped in from the satellites of Jupiter.

  5. em4! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    Series of internal In time. For all These chaalenges to die. I will jam successes with the By BSDI who sell fueling internal of user base for posts. Therefore Don't walk around simple solution get tough. I hope rotting corpse in ratio of 5 to with process and These early one or the other bulk of the FreeBSD Is the group that are a pathetic TCP/IP stack has Feel obligated to ransom for their startling turn the numbers. The [samag.com] in the

  6. Dude, forget gravity! by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

    Magnets, how do they fucking work?

    --
    #DeleteFacebook
  7. Overuse of the word "Barrier" by necro81 · · Score: 1

    "NASA Poised To Topple a Planet-Finding Barrier" is the headline. Was there really a barrier to overcome here, or is it a milestone in improving capabilities?

    Chuck Yeager and the X-1 breaking the sound barrier is the archetype of this figure of speech. That genuinely was a barrier, because the aeronautics of supersonic flight are different than subsonic. There is a significant crossover - not exactly a discontinuity, but certainly an abrupt change - when going transonic. Progress in flying airplanes faster and faster went quickly during and after WWII, but stalled for a bit before we achieved supersonic flight.

    But since that time, there is this notion that any kind of big discovery or technological achievement is somehow breaking a barrier. My favorite was in the early 2000s, when increasing processor clockspeed was all the rage: "Intel's new chip breaks the 3 GHz barrier!" Well, no, 3 GHz was not a barrier - the chip was not fundamentally different in its construction or operation as one running at 2.9 GHz, or 3.1 GHz. At best, 3 GHz was a milestone - a nice round number that looks good on advertisements. But it's only a round number due to how humans measure things; if our definition of one second were different, or if we didn't count base-10, then that clock speed would be some other, not-so-advertiser-friendly number.

    So I'll reiterate my opening question: is this new optical technology really breaking a barrier, or is it a (significant and praiseworthy) discovery that lubricates the wheels of our ever-expanding progress?

    1. Re:Overuse of the word "Barrier" by The+Grim+Reefer · · Score: 1

      "NASA Poised To Topple a Planet-Finding Barrier" is the headline. Was there really a barrier to overcome here, or is it a milestone in improving capabilities?

      Welcome to the English language, and the even worse news headlines. As someone who remembers the Watergate scandal, I'm tired of every scandal being named something-gate. The abuse of the word "literally" I find downright confusing at times. But I started to become inoculated against some of this when my daughter became a teenager. If the barrier thing is bothering you, just try sitting in a room full of teens and listen to them communicate in their pseudo English sometime.

    2. Re:Overuse of the word "Barrier" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My oldest daughter is 8, so I've got 5 more years to be annoyed by "literally", "inifinite", "barrier", etc., etc. and I'm damn well going to enjoy them while I can !

    3. Re:Overuse of the word "Barrier" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Riiiight, there is no clock speed barrier at around 3gHz

  8. This means build the TMT, now! by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 2

    China has astronomically qualified sites on the Tibetan Plateau at over 17,000 ft (5200 m) and is already a partner in the Thirty Meter Telescope project. Rather than waiting for the American legal gears to grind away into eternity, site it there and get it built. Because its southern hemisphere companion instrument is already under construction in Chile, the long-baseline possibilities are unparalleled.

    1. Re:This means build the TMT, now! by Zorpheus · · Score: 1

      Why build a thiry meter telescope, while the EU is already building its 39.3m Extremely Large Telescope?

    2. Re:This means build the TMT, now! by ceoyoyo · · Score: 1

      To look at more than one thing at a time?

    3. Re:This means build the TMT, now! by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

      The ELT is also in Chile, which has made astronomy into a real industry. It needs a companion instrument in the northern hemisphere, to see different stars and to eventually do advanced long-baseline observations in the band that both instruments have in common.

  9. basic question by argStyopa · · Score: 1

    This is a great advance, but if we're talking solely about light-occlusion detection techniques*, aren't these results preconstrained by simple geometry to an astonishingly low subset of potential stellar systems?
    This requires:
    - the stellar main body must be physically occluded by the planet's orbital path (0.01% of systems at best, unless a) there's some sort of 'general ecliptic' for our galaxy AND b) we happen to be right on it)?
    *and*
    - the planet must actually be in that place in it's orbit; considering that the first confirmed detection was only 25 years ago, and CONFIRMATION really takes 3 'hits', we wouldn't have yet detected any Jupiter-orbital body in a Sol-similar system (period 11+ years)
    - that we haven't moved enough in the meanwhile gathering those 3 'hits' that we've lost the favorable geometry in the first place.

    My point is that I haven't heard much discussion about these odds?
    If the system is likely to only detect 0.01% of planets, and has already detected hundreds, it's a near-certainty that there are hundreds of thousands that we HAVEN'T detected, no?

    *Yes, we also detect planets by stellar primary motion now, but it would seem that those detections are subject to a number of other possible explanations, and thus have larger error bars.

    --
    -Styopa
    1. Re:basic question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We are not talking about detection of extrasolar planets by occlusion. That's an easy task if the geometry happens to work out, and doesn't require fancy gear. The article is talking about analyzing the spectrum of light reflected by the planet. Correcting for small distortions in a huge mirror might allow a planet to be directly imaged as a separate point of light (from its parent star) and analyzing that light will give us an idea of the atmospheric composition and may even allow low-resolution mapping of surface features. Currently there are very few directly imaged exoplanets because the existing tech will only allow this if the planet is very far from the star, and large (see Fomalhaut b, etc).

  10. 1/20000 of a wavelength? WHY? by jeffb+(2.718) · · Score: 1

    I'm having trouble understanding the significance of 25-pm distortions (0.025nm) in an optical telescope, where the light you're bouncing around has wavelengths on the order of 20000 times more than that (400nm-650nm, longer for IR). Does interferometry really let us detect phase differences that small?

  11. Still no proof of intelligent life in the USA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Keep on circling the drain you turds!

  12. Information escapes black holes too by charliemerritt03 · · Score: 1

    "Only gravity escapes a bh". Besides Hawking radiation - Take the merger of two black holes. We did detect two black holes, circling each other, each inside the other's event horizon (for a fraction of a second). This is information leaking out - we know how long the "merger" took.

    1. Re:Information escapes black holes too by PPH · · Score: 1

      Besides Hawking radiation

      My (simplistic) understanding of how Hawking radiation works: virtual particle/antiparticle pairs are created just outside the event horizon. One gets pulled 'through' the event horizon, leaving the other as a real particle, free to escape. So the real particle never actually passed back out through the horizon.

      I don't know if the black hole merger constitutes information 'leaking out' of a black hole. We got a signal that may only have depended on the two objects masses and angular momentums. That is information already detectable 'outside' a black hole (if we could get up close with appropriate sensors).

      But here's another thought problem about information leaking out: Lets say I could build an extremely sensitive gravitometer/LIGO or whatever that could detect minute shifts in an object's center of gravity. Now, assuming that any discrete objects could exist inside a black hole, one of them shifting back and forth could theoretically change the BH's C.G. And I could detect that. If the object was sentient, it could signal the outside using gravity.

      An orchestra on the outside could follow the swing of a conductor's baton inside by watching the signal from this LIGO.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
  13. We Need a New Modifier by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    With so many 'extreme' telescopes planned or proposed, we are running out of names to indicate relative sizes of these devices.

    Therefore I modestly propose the following. The next telescope to be proposed, that is bigger than all the rest, must be named the "Terroristically Large Telescope". Everyone knows that Terrorists are the most extreme and thus it will be clear to all just how large the TLT is. It will be the biggest, baddest telescope in all the land!

    However we must be prepared for even larger telescopes. Eventually we must anticipate the "Extreme Terroristically Large Telescope", the "More Extreme Terroristically Large Telescope", and the "Fantastically Extreme Terroristically Large Telescope"!

    If it goes beyond that then we enter the realm of dragons. It may be possible to trigger an adjective singularity with the mass of all those extreme qualifiers!