31–38 of 38 posts
Slides about one of the projects to assist scientists with simulations: https://speakerdeck.com/gijzelaerr/rodrigues (Gijs gave the talk yesterday at the Python Amsterdam Meetup)
Could someone with some knowledge please elaborate on the potential implications on a project such as this, for example, if we found ourselves with clusters of low earth satellites streaming high-bandwith internet to the entire planet?
(source: I am a radio astronomer)
The technical challenges posed by the SKA really are astoundingly huge. The data generated by these dishes will require much higher data throuput than even the fastest optical links between CERN and its tier 1 sites (40 Gb/s), and they will be in the middle of a remote desert. Then there is the scale of compute and storage needed to analyse the data, which would be totally unfeasible with the tech we have today. It's…
Well, that's as much because CERN doesn't need additional throughput than anything else; technically it's a solved problem, which makes it one of the easier ones to do something about :) We can quite easily send 40Gb/s over a single fibre (I feel like I've seen over a terabit done...), and the undersea cables (more inhospitable than the remote desert) are far, far higher bandwidth. Consuming the data in a timely mann…
"The telescope will be perhaps 10,000 times more powerful than any we currently have" "Right now we can spot planets circling around distant stars. The SKA will be able to spot the equivalent of an airport radar system on one of those very, very distant planets." "visitors must be prepared for, scheduled in and accounted for when looking at the data this place produces. Long before you get to Boolardy, the 346,000-he…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Meter_Telescope_protest...
and a pretty good listicle here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/13/hawaii-telescope-pr...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, that's as much because CERN doesn't need additional throughput than anything else; technically it's a solved problem, which makes it one of the easier ones to do something about :) We can quite easily send 40Gb/s over a single fibre (I feel like I've seen over a terabit done...), and the undersea cables (more inhospitable than the remote desert) are far, far higher bandwidth. Consuming the data in a timely mann…
The optical private network from CERN to the tier 1 site where I work was upgraded from 10 Gb to 40 Gb between the first and second runs of the LHC. depending on what goes on during the second run that might need to be increased again. Building high bandwidth infrastructure for use by lots of (paying!) customers is probably more viable for large corporations than it is for science, where you have a budget at the star…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
An educated guess, but I suppose LEO is far enough for them to be able to filter out the signal in software.
Kind of would block out a whole range of frequencies though, right? Dozens of transiting satellites, transmitting at a fairly constant volume, but of random data?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Kind of would block out a whole range of frequencies though, right? Dozens of transiting satellites, transmitting at a fairly constant volume, but of random data?
Not necessarily. From what I heard, with an array antenna you can actually separate the scalar and vector (directional) component of incoming signals and ignore those coming from particular direction. So you could either track (in software) and ignore signals from particular points (satellite), or pretty much configure your array to be directional.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not necessarily. From what I heard, with an array antenna you can actually separate the scalar and vector (directional) component of incoming signals and ignore those coming from particular direction. So you could either track (in software) and ignore signals from particular points (satellite), or pretty much configure your array to be directional.
That's fascinating. But then also makes you wonder why they have gone to such extents to extinguish any radio signals in the vicinity of the project
- radio signal power goes down with square of the distance, so closer sources are much stronger than far ones
- any (be it software or hardware) filtering is not perfect, so a strong enough signal will probably still drown the weak ones
- it may be tad more difficult to filter out a close source because you can't assume it radiates in parallel lines, which to some extent you can with far ones (like for most practical purposes here on Earth we assume that sun rays are parallel)
- strong signals close to the ground means lots of reflections, which means more strong signals coming from random directions
- it's probably cheaper to make an exclusion zone in the middle of a desert rather than shielding yourself and upgrading the tech even more to filter out all the surrounding RF noise