6 ms·

The extremely large telescope will transform astronomy

86 points by jdkee 3y ago

jdkee 3y ago
See https://archive.is/89jLA https://archive.is/89jLA
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  Thank you. I have been IP blocked by the Economist for years (and eventually reblocked after IP changes). I've never figured out which of my unlikable attributes was just too much here.
  - more_corn 3y ago
    I am super impressed by this. I can understand getting blocked once by mistake or whatever. Getting blocked repeatedly. That takes some doing. How could you possibly not know why they keep blocking you? Are you just naturally nefarious? So much so that your mere presence screams out in the ether? Are you hosting a tor exit node? Even that shouldn’t be enough. Are you part of a botnet? I mean if you were controlling a botnet you wouldn’t get blocked. You’d have to be skating that fine line of mostly innocent but also bad.
    - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
      It's from Cloudflare but it isn't like the Crapthca pages, not even the endless, unskippable ones. Search for this text to see pics Sorry, you have been blocked You are unable to access economist.com Searching from that I see some people only hitting it with certain browsers. As I write this, other browsers give me Cloudflare 502's - where CF says I'm good but the site "could not be satisfied".
irjustin 3y ago
I'm super excited by all these new prospects. With Starship and ..... SLS...... anyway.... coming online I'm extremely excited at the prospects of reusing JWST concepts/tech on larger arrays or larger single mirrors. A whole new upper limit of space telescopes unlocked.
- credit_guy 3y ago
  There's a cautionary tale there though. With Starship being able to ferry more than 100 tons into space (JWST = 12 tons), you can imagine how much cheaper it will be to launch telescopes in space. A lot of the cost of JWST was related to the need to make it foldable in complicated ways, and to make it vibration resistant, and in general compensate for the fact that current rockets are cramped. If you can put new telescopes inside a massive cargo ships, protect them with several dampeners, give them ridiculous amounts of space so there's no need for funky folding, how much cheaper can you get? My bet is that by the end of the decade we will have more multiple telescopes more powerful than JWST in the sky, built and launched at a cost below $100 million each, or 100 times cheaper than JWST. Yet, if you ask 100 people, both scientists and laypeople, mabye 99 will tell you that the $10 billion bill for JWST was worth it. I'm pro-science, but scientists refuse to even ask this question: when you ask for billions for a super-duper experiment (ITER, looking at you, post-CERN collider too), what is the chance that you could get the same experiment 30 years from now for 100 times less money? The Human Genome Project cost $2.7 million in the 90's, yet now one can sequence any genome for hundreds of dollars (if not less). At what point will scientists be willing to say that maybe the price for the JWST was too high?
  - bigbillheck 3y ago
    I find it hard to believe that without all the immense effort of the HGP we'd have such cheap gene sequencing these days.
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    > I'm pro-science, but scientists refuse to even ask this question: when you ask for billions for a super-duper experiment (ITER, looking at you, post-CERN collider too), what is the chance that you could get the same experiment 30 years from now for 100 times less money? They'd correctly point out spending the money inventing the technology is precisely how it gets that cheap 30 years later. > At what point will scientists be willing to say that maybe the price for the JWST was too high? For context, the JWST cost us about as much as Americans spend on one Halloween. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/much-americans-spend-halloween-130034596.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/much-americans-spend-hallowee...
danparsonson 3y ago
My biggest concern is that telescopes will soon hit a fundamental size limit when we run out of adjectives for naming them - I posit 'Inconceivably Large Telescope' to be the maximum.
- skummetmaelk 3y ago
  What was inconceivable yesterday will be mundane tomorrow.
  - quchen 3y ago
    Reminds me of how most physics books with »modern« in their titles are from the 60s.
    - two_in_one 3y ago
      "modern c++", checked amazon. there are 5 out of 5 on the first line, and more in the list, with many variations.
    - marcosdumay 3y ago
      And the Modern Age ended at the time of the Industrial Revolution. Books are an understandable phenomenon. They were supposed to disappear before the stuff they describe stops being valid. But we have a nasty tendency of naming permanent things "modern". But anyway, it reminds me on how if you want a real textbook that covers a math or physics subject with all the details, you need to get the one named "fundamentals of X". If you go and get the "advanced X", it has a superficial and incomplete description that won't help you with anything.
    - dsq 3y ago
      As a non physicist, I'd like to see some titles. I feel that the sixties were a watershed decade and am interested in examples.
  - CoastalCoder 3y ago
    You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
obblekk 3y ago
Now that it’s been operational for a while, I would love to see an analysis of the James Webb to determine if there’s diminishing knowledge returns to size. I worry a bit the cost of something like this may be better spent on other space exploration efforts which will yield more knowledge. For instance, voyager 3?
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  I would say nothing comes close to the sheer detail of the universe porn that Webb gives us. It's one money-shot after another. As far as astonishing tech goes, Webb charts hard.
- sp332 3y ago
  A Voyager mission only tells us about things in our solar system. A big telescope can tell us about the rest of the universe.
marcyb5st 3y ago
I am looking forward for when we can ship an aragoscope to space. I believe the tech is already there (actually simpler compared JWST). A 1KM one could resolve Jupyter moons from 23 light years away [1]. PBS has a great video regarding this [2]. I mean, shipping an origami of light and bendy material should be easier than making an origami of super delicate mirrors that have to be micrometers tolerances and be cooled to few K to operate. [1] https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/2014_phase_i_webster_cash_the_aragoscope.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/2014_phase_i... Figure 17 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIASPc89Sgk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIASPc89Sgk
rereasonable 3y ago
Careful, we might bump the skybox soon...
diracs_stache 3y ago
I think these engineering marvels whose FWHM (sorry I'm a bit rusty on what the right parameter for light gathering ability in this application) will be leaps ahead of current instrumentation is important. But have the science missions it will host (spectrographs etc.) received the same attention? Along those lines follow up observations are critical, for the groundbreaking work done at the bleeding edge meter class instruments at universities/labratories/observatories are needed too (also grad students,researchers, data reduction etc.)

86 points by jdkee 3y ago

jdkee 3y ago

See https://archive.is/89jLA https://archive.is/89jLA

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
Thank you. I have been IP blocked by the Economist for years (and eventually reblocked after IP changes). I've never figured out which of my unlikable attributes was just too much here.
- more_corn 3y ago
  I am super impressed by this. I can understand getting blocked once by mistake or whatever. Getting blocked repeatedly. That takes some doing. How could you possibly not know why they keep blocking you? Are you just naturally nefarious? So much so that your mere presence screams out in the ether? Are you hosting a tor exit node? Even that shouldn’t be enough. Are you part of a botnet? I mean if you were controlling a botnet you wouldn’t get blocked. You’d have to be skating that fine line of mostly innocent but also bad.
  - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
    It's from Cloudflare but it isn't like the Crapthca pages, not even the endless, unskippable ones. Search for this text to see pics Sorry, you have been blocked You are unable to access economist.com Searching from that I see some people only hitting it with certain browsers. As I write this, other browsers give me Cloudflare 502's - where CF says I'm good but the site "could not be satisfied".

irjustin 3y ago

I'm super excited by all these new prospects. With Starship and ..... SLS...... anyway.... coming online I'm extremely excited at the prospects of reusing JWST concepts/tech on larger arrays or larger single mirrors. A whole new upper limit of space telescopes unlocked.

credit_guy 3y ago
There's a cautionary tale there though. With Starship being able to ferry more than 100 tons into space (JWST = 12 tons), you can imagine how much cheaper it will be to launch telescopes in space. A lot of the cost of JWST was related to the need to make it foldable in complicated ways, and to make it vibration resistant, and in general compensate for the fact that current rockets are cramped. If you can put new telescopes inside a massive cargo ships, protect them with several dampeners, give them ridiculous amounts of space so there's no need for funky folding, how much cheaper can you get? My bet is that by the end of the decade we will have more multiple telescopes more powerful than JWST in the sky, built and launched at a cost below $100 million each, or 100 times cheaper than JWST. Yet, if you ask 100 people, both scientists and laypeople, mabye 99 will tell you that the $10 billion bill for JWST was worth it. I'm pro-science, but scientists refuse to even ask this question: when you ask for billions for a super-duper experiment (ITER, looking at you, post-CERN collider too), what is the chance that you could get the same experiment 30 years from now for 100 times less money? The Human Genome Project cost $2.7 million in the 90's, yet now one can sequence any genome for hundreds of dollars (if not less). At what point will scientists be willing to say that maybe the price for the JWST was too high?
- bigbillheck 3y ago
  I find it hard to believe that without all the immense effort of the HGP we'd have such cheap gene sequencing these days.
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  > I'm pro-science, but scientists refuse to even ask this question: when you ask for billions for a super-duper experiment (ITER, looking at you, post-CERN collider too), what is the chance that you could get the same experiment 30 years from now for 100 times less money? They'd correctly point out spending the money inventing the technology is precisely how it gets that cheap 30 years later. > At what point will scientists be willing to say that maybe the price for the JWST was too high? For context, the JWST cost us about as much as Americans spend on one Halloween. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/much-americans-spend-halloween-130034596.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/much-americans-spend-hallowee...

danparsonson 3y ago

My biggest concern is that telescopes will soon hit a fundamental size limit when we run out of adjectives for naming them - I posit 'Inconceivably Large Telescope' to be the maximum.

skummetmaelk 3y ago
What was inconceivable yesterday will be mundane tomorrow.
- quchen 3y ago
  Reminds me of how most physics books with »modern« in their titles are from the 60s.
  - two_in_one 3y ago
    "modern c++", checked amazon. there are 5 out of 5 on the first line, and more in the list, with many variations.
  - marcosdumay 3y ago
    And the Modern Age ended at the time of the Industrial Revolution. Books are an understandable phenomenon. They were supposed to disappear before the stuff they describe stops being valid. But we have a nasty tendency of naming permanent things "modern". But anyway, it reminds me on how if you want a real textbook that covers a math or physics subject with all the details, you need to get the one named "fundamentals of X". If you go and get the "advanced X", it has a superficial and incomplete description that won't help you with anything.
  - dsq 3y ago
    As a non physicist, I'd like to see some titles. I feel that the sixties were a watershed decade and am interested in examples.
- CoastalCoder 3y ago
  You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

obblekk 3y ago

Now that it’s been operational for a while, I would love to see an analysis of the James Webb to determine if there’s diminishing knowledge returns to size. I worry a bit the cost of something like this may be better spent on other space exploration efforts which will yield more knowledge. For instance, voyager 3?

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
I would say nothing comes close to the sheer detail of the universe porn that Webb gives us. It's one money-shot after another. As far as astonishing tech goes, Webb charts hard.
sp332 3y ago
A Voyager mission only tells us about things in our solar system. A big telescope can tell us about the rest of the universe.

marcyb5st 3y ago

I am looking forward for when we can ship an aragoscope to space. I believe the tech is already there (actually simpler compared JWST). A 1KM one could resolve Jupyter moons from 23 light years away [1]. PBS has a great video regarding this [2]. I mean, shipping an origami of light and bendy material should be easier than making an origami of super delicate mirrors that have to be micrometers tolerances and be cooled to few K to operate. [1] https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/2014_phase_i_webster_cash_the_aragoscope.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/2014_phase_i... Figure 17 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIASPc89Sgk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIASPc89Sgk

rereasonable 3y ago

Careful, we might bump the skybox soon...

diracs_stache 3y ago

I think these engineering marvels whose FWHM (sorry I'm a bit rusty on what the right parameter for light gathering ability in this application) will be leaps ahead of current instrumentation is important. But have the science missions it will host (spectrographs etc.) received the same attention? Along those lines follow up observations are critical, for the groundbreaking work done at the bleeding edge meter class instruments at universities/labratories/observatories are needed too (also grad students,researchers, data reduction etc.)