[HN Gopher] The extremely large telescope will transform astronomy
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The extremely large telescope will transform astronomy
Author : jdkee
Score : 70 points
Date : 2023-12-07 02:55 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| jdkee wrote:
| See https://archive.is/89jLA
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Thank you. I have been IP blocked by the Economist for years
| (and eventually reblocked after IP changes). I've never figured
| out which of my unlikable attributes was just too much here.
| more_corn wrote:
| I am super impressed by this. I can understand getting
| blocked once by mistake or whatever. Getting blocked
| repeatedly. That takes some doing. How could you possibly not
| know why they keep blocking you? Are you just naturally
| nefarious? So much so that your mere presence screams out in
| the ether?
|
| Are you hosting a tor exit node? Even that shouldn't be
| enough. Are you part of a botnet? I mean if you were
| controlling a botnet you wouldn't get blocked. You'd have to
| be skating that fine line of mostly innocent but also bad.
| irjustin wrote:
| I'm super excited by all these new prospects.
|
| With Starship and ..... SLS...... anyway.... coming online I'm
| extremely excited at the prospects of reusing JWST concepts/tech
| on larger arrays or larger single mirrors. A whole new upper
| limit of space telescopes unlocked.
| credit_guy wrote:
| There's a cautionary tale there though. With Starship being
| able to ferry more than 100 tons into space (JWST = 12 tons),
| you can imagine how much cheaper it will be to launch
| telescopes in space. A lot of the cost of JWST was related to
| the need to make it foldable in complicated ways, and to make
| it vibration resistant, and in general compensate for the fact
| that current rockets are cramped. If you can put new telescopes
| inside a massive cargo ships, protect them with several
| dampeners, give them ridiculous amounts of space so there's no
| need for funky folding, how much cheaper can you get? My bet is
| that by the end of the decade we will have more multiple
| telescopes more powerful than JWST in the sky, built and
| launched at a cost below $100 million each, or 100 times
| cheaper than JWST.
|
| Yet, if you ask 100 people, both scientists and laypeople,
| mabye 99 will tell you that the $10 billion bill for JWST was
| worth it.
|
| I'm pro-science, but scientists refuse to even ask this
| question: when you ask for billions for a super-duper
| experiment (ITER, looking at you, post-CERN collider too), what
| is the chance that you could get the same experiment 30 years
| from now for 100 times less money? The Human Genome Project
| cost $2.7 million in the 90's, yet now one can sequence any
| genome for hundreds of dollars (if not less).
|
| At what point will scientists be willing to say that maybe the
| price for the JWST was too high?
| bigbillheck wrote:
| I find it hard to believe that without all the immense effort
| of the HGP we'd have such cheap gene sequencing these days.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > I'm pro-science, but scientists refuse to even ask this
| question: when you ask for billions for a super-duper
| experiment (ITER, looking at you, post-CERN collider too),
| what is the chance that you could get the same experiment 30
| years from now for 100 times less money?
|
| They'd correctly point out spending the money inventing the
| technology is precisely _how_ it gets that cheap 30 years
| later.
|
| > At what point will scientists be willing to say that maybe
| the price for the JWST was too high?
|
| For context, the JWST cost us about as much as Americans
| spend on one Halloween. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/much-
| americans-spend-hallowee...
| tedunangst wrote:
| But the money spent on JWST did not make the rockets
| bigger.
| martinclayton wrote:
| I think the timeline and price tag are overly optimistic, but
| agree we can expect massive benefits from the lift capability
| of Starship.
|
| The cheapest big telescopes I could find with a quick trawl
| are the Hobby-Eberly Telescope and its "clone" the SALT. They
| cost about $20 million each, compared to similarly-sized
| telescopes in the $80 million-and-up price range.
|
| I doubt there's a project time-line since the 1970s from
| inception to first light of under 5 years, which would put us
| at 2029 already.
|
| Perhaps the aim should be to have lots of "good enough" unit
| instruments, rather than one world-beatingly big one that
| politicians or billionaires find stimulating to throw money
| at.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > At what point will scientists be willing to say that maybe
| the price for the JWST was too high?
|
| Any of them whose project was not funded because the money
| was tied up in funding JWST?
| hn8305823 wrote:
| I don't think larger single mirrors is going to be a thing. The
| numerous advantages of hexagon arrays far outweigh (pun
| intended) the single drawback of the large hexagonal
| diffraction spikes. The point spread function (PSF) is very
| well defined and can be easily worked around by some
| combination of PSF modeling, selecting a desired orientation,
| or multiple exposures.
|
| The Keck Telescope was the first major observatory to use this
| technique in 1993.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keck_telescope
| danparsonson wrote:
| My biggest concern is that telescopes will soon hit a fundamental
| size limit when we run out of adjectives for naming them - I
| posit 'Inconceivably Large Telescope' to be the maximum.
| skummetmaelk wrote:
| What was inconceivable yesterday will be mundane tomorrow.
| quchen wrote:
| Reminds me of how most physics books with >>modern<< in their
| titles are from the 60s.
| two_in_one wrote:
| "modern c++", checked amazon. there are 5 out of 5 on the
| first line, and more in the list, with many variations.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| And the Modern Age ended at the time of the Industrial
| Revolution.
|
| Books are an understandable phenomenon. They were supposed
| to disappear before the stuff they describe stops being
| valid. But we have a nasty tendency of naming permanent
| things "modern".
|
| But anyway, it reminds me on how if you want a real
| textbook that covers a math or physics subject with all the
| details, you need to get the one named "fundamentals of X".
| If you go and get the "advanced X", it has a superficial
| and incomplete description that won't help you with
| anything.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you
| think it means.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I want to see your slide deck and presentation about getting
| the Big Mundane Telescope approved. By want, I mean, would
| never
| quchen wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/1294/ :-)
| jxcl wrote:
| Tom Scott has a great video about why the ELT is already likely
| the largest telescope that will ever be built
| https://youtu.be/QqRREz0iBes?si=tC3Py0W6vqXbZAbq
| pennomi wrote:
| I didn't have time to watch yet, but did he take into
| consideration lunar crater telescopes? I always thought that
| would be an excellent reason to establish a lunar base.
| spacemark wrote:
| Ever is a very long time.
| ithkuil wrote:
| LLT (ludicrously large telescope)
| tromp wrote:
| There's always Plaid beyond Ludicrous:-(
| wiz21c wrote:
| BFT
|
| (I let you guess, but that's a close cousin of the BFG)
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| big friendly telescope?
| mannykannot wrote:
| The 'F' is silent, as I put it when explaining what RTFM
| meant to an elderly relative.
| askonomm wrote:
| Haha that's actually really clever!
| Paddywack wrote:
| Is this a possible solution? Gravitational lense telescope?
|
| https://youtu.be/NQFqDKRAROI?feature=shared
| have_faith wrote:
| ELT Pro Max
| scrlk wrote:
| "This is the best telescope we've ever made, and we think
| you're gonna love it!"
| dylan604 wrote:
| If only telescopes were being built with significant
| improvements on a yearly basis. Instead, we have words like
| decadal project which indicates just how slowly they are
| brought about.
| gammarator wrote:
| Complain to your congressperson!
| Yizahi wrote:
| Our 8 meter mirror is essentially the same as others 16
| meter mirrors.
| benburleson wrote:
| I used to work in the telescope world. Our organization
| acquired another organization that was working on NGAT: Next
| Generation Astronomical Telescope. At the time, we were also
| working on newer telescope models, and I joked about what we
| would name those...
|
| I guess astronomers, like programmers, are just bad at naming
| things.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I actually really like names in the astronomy world. NGC
| 1832-456.382 really knock my socks off.
|
| When they are not using boring names like that, the astro
| world does have some great names. It lets us know humans were
| involved in the naming. From the acronyms to the super
| superlative names, they have a bit of personality to them.
| poulpy123 wrote:
| it was named OWL (overwhelmingly large telescope) when the
| project was to have a 100m diameter telescope. so I think there
| are still some years before we run out of words :)
| captainbland wrote:
| Ah, see that's when we start swapping the second and third
| terms for things that imply even larger sizes. And then we can
| even go up to the inconceivably colossal quettascope.
| nimbius wrote:
| we will have to move from real names based on conceptual
| understanding into the theoretical.
|
| 'this thing is giant (you wont believe what happens next)'
|
| 'nobody expected it to be this big (you have to see it)'
|
| 'mr beast trapped in HERE for 8 weeks (cant plant any trees)'
| johndunne wrote:
| The 'you won't believe how big the next telescope is'
| telescope. Seriously though, I think meta materials could end
| up creating a new field of optical telescopic lenses over the
| next few decades.
| timbit42 wrote:
| Infinitely Large Telescope would be larger than the
| Inconceivably Large Telescope.
| bandyaboot wrote:
| Perhaps ISO could create a standardized list of "large"
| adjectives. Whenever a new telescope is built, it takes over
| the appropriate adjective and the existing ones are moved down
| accordingly. The one that gets bumped off the list gets turned
| into an aviary (after removing the mirror of course).
|
| Edit: come to think of it, mirrors are probably safe right? The
| birds will stop to avoid flying into the other bird.
| obblekk wrote:
| Now that it's been operational for a while, I would love to see
| an analysis of the James Webb to determine if there's diminishing
| knowledge returns to size.
|
| I worry a bit the cost of something like this may be better spent
| on other space exploration efforts which will yield more
| knowledge.
|
| For instance, voyager 3?
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| I would say nothing comes close to the sheer detail of the
| universe porn that Webb gives us. It's one money-shot after
| another.
|
| As far as astonishing tech goes, Webb charts hard.
| sp332 wrote:
| A Voyager mission only tells us about things in our solar
| system. A big telescope can tell us about the rest of the
| universe.
| marcyb5st wrote:
| I am looking forward for when we can ship an aragoscope to space.
| I believe the tech is already there (actually simpler compared
| JWST). A 1KM one could resolve Jupyter moons from 23 light years
| away [1]. PBS has a great video regarding this [2].
|
| I mean, shipping an origami of light and bendy material should be
| easier than making an origami of super delicate mirrors that have
| to be micrometers tolerances and be cooled to few K to operate.
|
| [1] https://www.nasa.gov/wp-
| content/uploads/2017/03/2014_phase_i... Figure 17
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIASPc89Sgk
| rereasonable wrote:
| Careful, we might bump the skybox soon...
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