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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
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After 20 years of planning, developing and constructing, astronomers at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy have finally released the first image captured by the new Large Binocular Telescope, an instrument with a light-gathering power 24 times greater than the Hubble Space Telescope. The so-called LBT, an American-German-Italian joint venture stationed on the 3,190-meter-high Mt. Graham in Arizona, will be able to image planets circling distant stars and is poised to help answer fundamental questions about the universe, including how galaxies, stars and planets evolved from the big bang.
"The LBT will open completely new possibilities in researching planets outside the solar system and the investigation of the farthest--and thus youngest--galaxies," says Thomas Henning of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy. To date, a handful of impressive ground-based telescopes have provided astronomers with important insights about the universe. For example, they have learned that stars form in dense cloudlike features within galaxies. But observing the intricacies of star birth is difficult with these telescopes because the radiating energy of low-mass stars and brown dwarfs is not bright enough to be visible and interstellar dust can obscure views. The Hubble Space Telescope has helped overcome some of these problems, but this kind of instrument is expensive to build, launch and maintain.
Now a combination of advanced optics, instrumentation and high-power computers is making it possible for ground-based telescopes, particularly those situated on high mountaintops, to see deeper into space than ever before at a fraction of the cost. The LBT can resolve faint objects because it has two large mirrors--each 8.4 meters in diameter--that focus like field glasses for viewing. By combining the two views, the instrument is able to collect as much light as a single telescope with an 11.8-meter mirror. By comparison, the Hubble Space Telescope's mirror is 2.4 meters in diameter.
But the LBT doesn't rely only on its mirrors. It uses optics designed to adapt to observing conditions and it works with a combination of specialized instruments that can do such things as gather infrared images, detect the composition of the surface of stars, compensate for the blurring caused by turbulence in Earth's atmosphere, and boost image sharpness to a quality far better than that of Hubble.
For the "first light" image, astronomers used just one of LBT's mirrors to capture a spiral galaxy in the constellation Andromeda. In the future, they will use both mirrors to conduct a number of studies, including observing the Jupiterlike planets known to be revolving around our nearest neighboring stars.
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11 Comments
Add CommentI hope this telescope can also be used to watch for non-random, rapid wave function drop,which could be,others in some other solar system trying comunicate,via spooky action at a distance method.This could allow us to talk in real time light years away.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisjack.123, have you been reading that medical marijoewanna blog with your rose colored prism glasses on again? I've warned you that that activity can lead to dependence on heavier reading, Literature yo mamma would be afraid of.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this.If they can see so far away in space's vacuum, it won't be long before they build us a telescope that let's us see further than twenty feet under water.
Michael-The two slit experiment has yet to be explained.entanglement didn't just scare momma,it scared the hell out of Einstien as well.It may not have a limit.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHaving only monocular vision, I have to imagine the benefit of 3-D, X-Ray spec equipment. My world is all visually flat just like the monitor you're looking at. But I comprehend the principles involved and wonder, "Why haven't they ydone this before?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this.Of course the next step is to build a twin Hubble and float it next to numbeer 1 and then we may resolve that object that's just been located that's 13 billion light years away/old whatever.
Michael-Sorry about your vision problems,I believe you have mentioned this before.I am certain that it doesn't affect your minds eye view to see past many others. Why hasn't it been done before?Well untill lately most scientist have said quite loudly that it was impossible.Only now do we have lasers and telescopes sensitive enough to do it.When I was 14 years old I suggested that the two slit light experiment could be use as a communication device to a teacher,and he said it was impossible,and when I asked why, he viciously ridiculed me in front of the rest of the class,saying that I was an idiot for asking stupid questions and that I couldn't understand why, even if he told me,which he didn't.I can just imangine how scientists treat their peers that have ideas they don't like.Look at how long it took for someone to do a chemical analysis of the K.T. boundry,it was always there and even after it was done ,it took years before most scientist admitted that it might have been an asteroid that was part of the reason for die off .I picked and put down my idea many times over the years.The Heisenberg uncertainty principle was the main stumbling block.How do you look for wave function drop without causing it.It took me 35 years to figure it out.I know your time is valuable but if you go to Http://www.sciam.com//article.cfm?id=entangled-photons-quantum-spookiness .you will see my idea in full.The reason I am putting this forth, is that the Apophis project needs funding and I am hoping that funds that this idea might produce could go toward this project.When you get there you will see that nobody has responded, even to say I am wrong.Wish I hand more money to contribute but I don't,but sending robots to Apophis would be alot cheaper than sending people,none of problems people have,no need for air,food,and shielding from radiation.Real time communications directing these machines would be far more productive,because the would be no lag with comands and actions and all this without endangering human lives.This technology could also be used for secure communications in orbit using only mirrors,solar winds would not effect them the way it does satelites,and talking to the people on planets orbiting other stars wouldn't be a half bad way of spending time till we figure out how to go faster than light.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisjack.123, my take on the situation of science in today's society is that it, like Pavlov's dogs have become trained to give an answer, get paid. That has even swung a little to 'I'll pay now via grant, but give me an answer later, okay?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this.Science is supposed to be the endeavor that asks questions primarily. The only reason we seek answers was supposed to be to allow us to ask better questions.
.Fifty years of the Cold War may be the reason this is our predicament. So, to get us back on track, I think at least you will pick up on it and ask too, "Why, being separate manifestations of the same phenomena, do mass and energy react differently during interactions with the same manifestation? Wave passes through wave without a hint of influence, while mass can do nothing but bounce off itself? Even when those two interact, sometimes there is no reaction (a bounce) and sometimes there is (absorption) and sometimes it's a mix?
Michael-Strange isn't it,life has been around for about 4 billion years and only in the last 200 have we began to understand whats going on,and in that same 200 years of time we are on the verge of figuring out how to save our species and rest of all life on Earth and the only way we are going to get this done is to capture an asteroid so we have enough resources to get it done,but nobody is listening,it is a race to get enough people off this planet,before we over populate it to the point that we don't have enough resources to get it done.The window of opportunity of doing this is getting smaller with each passing day,my only hope is that that it isn't closed before the rest of the people who have the power and money to do it, figure it out as well.These people have to understand that, before it all goes down the toilet, that they will be going down same the pipe with the rest of us in the same flush,and all that power and money won't help once its to late.Where in they could be the most famous people on Earth either for saving it in which case future generations will be reading about them with praise,or for its destruction,when some future archaeologists from some other species come here and consider them a quite despicable group who could have done something and didn't.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisjack.123, go to the most distant observed stellar event blog postings and introduce yourself to jtqwyer. You will enjoy each others' company as I have yours and his(heers?) I am male. And you?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisjust type distant stellar event in the search window or do a blog surf through Space and Cosmology and then the lead or science page tease for the star explosion that happened at least 13 billion years ago.some of his and your reed shifting and universal space time hidden-ness seem to jive.
just sounds like pandora's box to me. open with care!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisand although I am a mystic, I submit that my explanation for the 2-slit experiment is as good as anyone's:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Matter is Consciousness"
Thus the universe is looking at it's self?The two slit experiment is well documented,there is no doubt that you can't look at wave and particle function at the same time.It would seam that photons take both paths at the same time?Entanglement is real,and it appears to have no distance limit,in other words there is no reason we can't use it to communicate light years away with other species,except for those who profit from not doing so.
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