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Will people from seti eventually build Radio Telescopes on Mars to search for extratresstrial life? Maybe the Radio Telescopes and the optical telescopes that they can use can be built in orbit somehow and also on the surface.
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Good idea, but wrong planet.
The Earth has a lot of radio noise to contend with and a lot of atmosphere to interfere with every kind of telescope. That is of course why we should move them of planet, but to where.
Mars sounds nice. It will be home to many scientists some day, so it will be convenient to build them there - and they should. But it will still develope plenty of radio static as more and more people settle there. And, it has an atmosphere that will interfere with the measurements.
Telescopes in orbit already show better performance than their ground-based counterparts, but they are harder to service and still relatively small.
The Moon, though, is a great place to put them. The far side has absolutely no radio static from Earth. And, of course there is no atmosphere to contend with. Not as many people will settle on the moon (lack of resources) so the radio static won't increase much in the future. And, the kicker is that the moon is very stable (no earthquakes or plate tectonics). So, optical interferometers (arrays) can span the suface of the moon and bring us clear pictures of extrasolar Earth-sized planets. That is the greatest value of the moon. It is the perfect platform for telescopes.
As far as I know Optical Interferometers are either current or near term technologies. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
Just think of the excitement (and funding) SETI could produce if it had actual pictures of other Earthlike planets. People don't care to much about numbers, but pictures capture the imagination.
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Just think of the excitement (and funding) SETI could produce if it had actual pictures of other Earthlike planets. People don't care to much about numbers, but pictures capture the imagination.
What an outstanding idea! I would sure love to see them.
Would also appreciate knowing what an optical interferometer is. I get the impression that most are used at radio frequences which is why they are so large. Or are we talking about something other than frequence of operation here.
Anyway, sounds great.
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'bout the noise... Isn't that getting less and less of a problem, thanks to powerful computing? Extreme narrow-band multi-specral filters, synthetic aperture, interferometry etc...
Questions about these: send remcook a pm, he's got lots of knowledge about that, or visit the Everytthing Technology message boards. Go to "ask an astronomer." (Great, fairly low-traffic site, highly recommended, lots of real pro's.)
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The Moon, though, is a great place to put them. The far side has absolutely no radio static from Earth. And, of course there is no atmosphere to contend with. Not as many people will settle on the moon (lack of resources) so the radio static won't increase much in the future. And, the kicker is that the moon is very stable (no earthquakes or plate tectonics). So, optical interferometers (arrays) can span the suface of the moon and bring us clear pictures of extrasolar Earth-sized planets. That is the greatest value of the moon. It is the perfect platform for telescopes.
*Haven't seen MarsGuy here in quite a while.
Anyway, I agree with him.
An update on SETI:
http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2680]SETI 2020
--Cindy
We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...
--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)
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I wish SETI good luck but I think they are wasting their time. The chances of detecting a radio signal that has travelled across billions of miles of space is very remote. EMR spreads as it travels and who says an alien species would purposely transmit a radio signal on a frequency based on hydrogen anyway? And the signal doesn't just have to hit the earth, it has to hit the Aricebo dish with enough juice to be detectable. I think by the time we get humans on mars we will have given up on searching radio frequencies.
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Questions about these: send remcook a pm, he's got lots of knowledge about that, or visit the Everytthing Technology message boards. Go to "ask an astronomer." (Great, fairly low-traffic site, highly recommended, lots of real pro's.)
Again, thanks for the info.
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Would also appreciate knowing what an optical interferometer is. I get the impression that most are used at radio frequences which is why they are so large. Or are we talking about something other than frequence of operation here.
The angular resolution of a telescope is determined by a formula called the Rayleigh Criterion. It states that: sin(angle)= 1.22*(wavelength of light)/(diameter of telescopes primary mirror(or lens)). In other words, for a given wavelength of light, the bigger your telescope's primary mirror is, the sharper your pictures will be. This is the theoretical maximum resolution, and if there is substantial atmospheric interference or the mirrors are poorly manufactured the telescope will not be able to achieve these values.
An interferometer carefully combines light from different telescopes and is able to gain a resolution equivalent to a giant telescope with a mirror that spans the distance between the telescopes. Note that this does not give the interferometer the same light gathering power as the giant telescope, so while it can generate very sharp images, the interferometer would not have the same ability as the giant telescope to find very dim objects.
For an interferometer to work, a great deal of precision is required. The distances between telescopes must be closely monitored, and the light beams must be combined very carefully. Tolerances are on the order of the wavelength of light being used, so it is much more difficult to build an interferometer using short wavelengths(such as visible light) than it is to build one using long wavelengths(such as Radio).
Radio interferometers have been around for decades. However, due to the much greater difficulty of building optical interferometers, they are only just now becoming available. The twin 10-meter Keck telescopes and the 4 8.2-meter VLT array have begun using this technology, and currently their interferometers are (at least partially) operational.
Interferometers represent a big step forward for astronomy. I think that first telescope able to image exoplanets will probably be a space based infrared interferometer. Infrared has the advantage that the planet would be only a few orders of magnitude dimmer than the star that it is circling, so it will not be as overwhelmed by the star as it would be in the visible spectrum. The reason why it would have to be space based is that the atmosphere absorbs a large percentage of the infrared spectrum.
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Inflatable moon telescope could peer into universe's Dark Ages
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Wrecked Arecibo Observatory May Undergo a Downsized Resurrection
https://gizmodo.com/wrecked-arecibo-rad … 1850514864
The Arecibo Observatory's metal tower that is held above the 305 m-wide dish collapsed destroying the telescope in 2020.
https://physicsworld.com/a/astronomers- … placement/
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Should the Next Big Observatories Be Built on the Moon?
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Astronomers detect most distant fast radio burst to date
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New astrobiology centres in U.S. aim to widen the search for extraterrestrial life
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/extrate … -1.7002629
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https://nz.news.yahoo.com/signatures-al … 07256.html
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A Radio Telescope on the Moon Could Help Us Understand the First 50 Million Years of the Universe
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