21–30 of 66 posts
edit: turns out I should have just finished reading the article.. bigger telescopes!
This Lebbeus Woods has some great artwork. I'd never heard of him before but I found these two pieces by him: http://historyofourworld.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/lw-iii.... http://www.krobarch.com/images/winners/2012/entry3353.jpg
The practical limitation isn't just magnitude, but resolving power. Atmospheric disturbance makes it difficult to resolve anything smaller than a meter from orbit, and the diffraction limit means the further are away from the thing you want to observe, the wider your telescope needs to be. Since the distortion effects near a black hole are near-asymptotic, the features we want to see have very small subtended angles,…
But you are right that increased resolution is key. The higher resolution helps you beat the confusion limit by working to resolve the faint background sources into individual objects, so you can separate them.
So, if you wanted to be certain that what you were seeing was the refracted light from Earth, you would need the high resolution to be sure that what you were seeing was actually that reflection, and not just a superposition of fainter background sources.
More on the confusion limit: http://coolwiki.ipac.caltech.edu/index.php/Confusion
I've never seen that image of our galaxy's central region, it's fascinating! Is "Sgr A" the black hole, Sagittarius A*? If yes, why would it be bright? I thought it's inactive.
Sgr A is the black hole Sagittarius A* as far as I know. The black hole itself isn't bright. As far as I understand, the swirling gas around it (outside the event horizon) is what's sending out all the light. What do you mean by inactive?
The practical limitation isn't just magnitude, but resolving power. Atmospheric disturbance makes it difficult to resolve anything smaller than a meter from orbit, and the diffraction limit means the further are away from the thing you want to observe, the wider your telescope needs to be. Since the distortion effects near a black hole are near-asymptotic, the features we want to see have very small subtended angles,…
I find it sort of ironic that everyone here thinks this would be awesome, but are completely opposed to hovering predator drones observing our every action 24/7. Obviously it's all a matter of who has access to the data, but essentially the data would be the same.
I find it sort of ironic that everyone here thinks this would be awesome, but are completely opposed to hovering predator drones observing our every action 24/7. Obviously it's all a matter of who has access to the data, but essentially the data would be the same.
I for one could not care less if historians centuries in the future want to observe me through a black hole. Its effects on freedom and civil rights is basically nil, unlike predator drones.