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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 Telesc
by 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 agoWhat was inconceivable yesterday will be mundane tomorrow.
- quchen 3y agoReminds 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 agoAnd 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 agoAs 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 agoYou keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
- dylan604 3y agoI want to see your slide deck and presentation about getting the Big Mundane Telescope approved. By want, I mean, would never
- quchen 3y agohttps://xkcd.com/1294/ https://xkcd.com/1294/ :-)
- jxcl 3y agoTom Scott has a great video about why the ELT is already likely the largest telescope that will ever be built https://youtu.be/QqRREz0iBes?si=tC3Py0W6vqXbZAbq https://youtu.be/QqRREz0iBes?si=tC3Py0W6vqXbZAbq
- pennomi 3y agoI didn’t have time to watch yet, but did he take into consideration lunar crater telescopes? I always thought that would be an excellent reason to establish a lunar base.
- tetris11 3y agoIs there not a cost towards it being so large that it becomes comically too large to clean?
- Synaesthesia 3y agoThey mentioned in this article that this mirror is so large that the mirror segments cannot support their own weight.
- spacemark 3y agoEver is a very long time.
- ithkuil 3y agoLLT (ludicrously large telescope)
- tromp 3y agoThere's always Plaid beyond Ludicrous:-(
- wiz21c 3y agoBFT (I let you guess, but that's a close cousin of the BFG)
- adgjlsfhk1 3y agobig friendly telescope?
- mannykannot 3y agoThe 'F' is silent, as I put it when explaining what RTFM meant to an elderly relative.
- askonomm 3y agoHaha that's actually really clever!
- positr0n 3y agoFYI it's generally accepted that F stands for Fine if you don’t want to swear :) Same with TFA. The Fine Article.
- mannykannot 3y agoYeah, though in this case, it fit in well with the fact that my relative had recently heard the "There's no 'F' in broccoli" dad-joke: Customer: "I'd like a pound of broccoli, please." Grocer: "I'm out of broccoli." ... repeat 1 or two times Grocer: "How do you spell broccoli?" Customer: "B-R-O-C-C-O-L-I." Grocer: "You left out the 'F'." Customer: "There's no 'F' in broccoli!" Grocer: "That's what I'm trying to tell you!" My apologies for any annoyance this joke has caused.
- Paddywack 3y agoIs this a possible solution? Gravitational lense telescope? https://youtu.be/NQFqDKRAROI?feature=shared https://youtu.be/NQFqDKRAROI?feature=shared
- have_faith 3y agoELT Pro Max
- scrlk 3y ago"This is the best telescope we've ever made, and we think you're gonna love it!"
- dylan604 3y agoIf only telescopes were being built with significant improvements on a yearly basis. Instead, we have words like decadal project which indicates just how slowly they are brought about.
- gammarator 3y agoComplain to your congressperson!
- Yizahi 3y agoOur 8 meter mirror is essentially the same as others 16 meter mirrors.
- benburleson 3y agoI used to work in the telescope world. Our organization acquired another organization that was working on NGAT: Next Generation Astronomical Telescope. At the time, we were also working on newer telescope models, and I joked about what we would name those… I guess astronomers, like programmers, are just bad at naming things.
- dylan604 3y agoI actually really like names in the astronomy world. NGC 1832-456.382 really knock my socks off. When they are not using boring names like that, the astro world does have some great names. It lets us know humans were involved in the naming. From the acronyms to the super superlative names, they have a bit of personality to them.
- poulpy123 3y agoit was named OWL (overwhelmingly large telescope) when the project was to have a 100m diameter telescope. so I think there are still some years before we run out of words :)
- captainbland 3y agoAh, see that's when we start swapping the second and third terms for things that imply even larger sizes. And then we can even go up to the inconceivably colossal quettascope.
- nimbius 3y agowe will have to move from real names based on conceptual understanding into the theoretical. 'this thing is giant (you wont believe what happens next)' 'nobody expected it to be this big (you have to see it)' 'mr beast trapped in HERE for 8 weeks (cant plant any trees)'
- johndunne 3y agoThe ‘you won’t believe how big the next telescope is’ telescope. Seriously though, I think meta materials could end up creating a new field of optical telescopic lenses over the next few decades.
- candiodari 3y agoMaybe taking a clue from software. Let's call it "Large Telescope '95" (because let's face it, if it's built they will have been planning it from back then at least)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- timbit42 3y agoInfinitely Large Telescope would be larger than the Inconceivably Large Telescope.
- bandyaboot 3y agoPerhaps ISO could create a standardized list of “large” adjectives. Whenever a new telescope is built, it takes over the appropriate adjective and the existing ones are moved down accordingly. The one that gets bumped off the list gets turned into an aviary (after removing the mirror of course). Edit: come to think of it, mirrors are probably safe right? The birds will stop to avoid flying into the other bird.
- inkyoto 3y ago> I posit 'Inconceivably Large Telescope' to be the maximum. No, we can't stop just yet as they are – conceivably – other models that will eventually surpass the «Inconceivably Large Telescope»: – «Penultimately Inconceivably Large Telescope» – «Antepenultimately Inconceivably Large Telescope» – «Preantepenultimately Inconceivably Large Telescope». A strings of further upgrades is also likely as a series of «Inconceivably Ultra Large» and «Pre/ante/penultimately Inconceivably Ultra Large» telescopes.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- shiroiuma 3y agoThis is why I really hate it when people pick dumb names like this, which seem to assume that all progress will completely stop after they finish building this thing. Look at Windows NT, for example: NT stands for "new technology". Well it obviously isn't new any more.
- kirkules 3y agoSome adjectives stack, like "terribly". Though maybe there's some kind of strong enough diminishing effect on emphasis value such that any number of "terribly"s still has bounded effect XD