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The other day I was wondering what was coming after James Webb and if I'd be able to see the results in my lifetime. And then I stumbled across the 100-year-pl
by ck2 4y ago
The other day I was wondering what was coming after James Webb and if I'd be able to see the results in my lifetime.
And then I stumbled across the 100-year-plan to build a "Solar Gravitational Lens"
Would have resolution of 10 square kilometers per pixel for objects 100 light-years away.
Blew my mind to the point I still think about it every few days
https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/2020_Phase_I_Phase_II/Direct_Multipixel_Imaging_and_Spectroscopy_of_an_Exoplanet/ https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/2020_Phase_...
https://phys.org/news/2022-10-solar-gravitational-lens-humanity-powerful.html https://phys.org/news/2022-10-solar-gravitational-lens-human...
More "down to earth" (literally) is the Giant Magellan Telescope in 2029 which will have four times the resolution of James Webb but since it is earth-bound I guess atmosphere is going to limit details without AI enhancement
Adding: ooh ELT is 2027, even better, look at Hubble/James Webb in comparison bottom left
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Comparison_optical_telescope_primary_mirrors.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Comparis...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_Large_Telescope#Comparison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_Large_Telescope#Comp...
- nmcveity 4y agoThere was a PBS SpaceTime on the solar gravitational lens proposal not that long ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d0EGIt1SPc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d0EGIt1SPc
- scrollaway 4y agoI started watching PBS SpaceTime recently and it really is an exceptionally entertaining channel.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 4y agoA bit more plausibly near future, but there was a story about how NASA was testing a method to cast perfect lenses from little more than a mold and a liquid material. If successful, a spacecraft could unfold a frame, release the lens mirror material, and create a surface tens of meters in diameter, all constructed in space. Undoubtedly significant engineering hurdles, but it could result in an order of magnitude improvement in telescope resolution for cheap. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/nasa-tries-new-ways-fluid-materials-to-build-giant-space-telescopes https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/nasa-tries-new-ways-fluid-...
- creativenolo 4y agoI often wonder when or if we might see a photo of a planet around another star and what might it take to do it.
- aardvark179 4y agoAlready been done. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_directly_imaged_exoplanets https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_directly_imaged_exop...
- floxy 4y agoHere is an awesome video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQFqDKRAROI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQFqDKRAROI ...and the paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.08421 https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.08421