Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. He's here, and welcome to Forward Thinking, about
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says, but my eyes,
Speaker 1: my eyes, my eyes are like a telescope. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren foc Obama, and I'm Joe McCormick. And we're
Speaker 1: so glad to have Lauren back with us this time.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Joe. Yeah, I believe while I was out
Speaker 1: you guys talked about telescopes. We did, but we didn't
Speaker 1: finish talking about them, that's right. So without you, Lauren,
Speaker 1: we recorded the first part of a podcast episode about telescopes,
Speaker 1: and today we're going to tackle part two. So what
Speaker 1: are we talking about? Last time we we sort of
Speaker 1: started with some musings about the history of telescopes and
Speaker 1: what they mean to us, the fact that they're not
Speaker 1: just for creating images that are pleasing to the eye,
Speaker 1: but they're actually very important scientific instruments. They give us knowledge.
Speaker 1: It's very useful for determining our place in the universe
Speaker 1: and learning things that we couldn't otherwise know. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: being able to confirm the fact that the Earth is
Speaker 1: not the center of the universe, right, that was one
Speaker 1: of the thing. Yeah, pretty good. Well, I mean there
Speaker 1: were a lot of different lines of evidence that eventually
Speaker 1: converged to disprove the geocentric models, the idea that everything
Speaker 1: revolves around the Earth. But but being able to see
Speaker 1: stuff in outer space certainly helped, right, So when Galileo
Speaker 1: looked through his telescope and saw moons orbiting Jupiter and
Speaker 1: saw the phases of Venus and things like that, that
Speaker 1: was some good evidence. Okay, really it seems like we're
Speaker 1: we're all going around the Sun instead of it all
Speaker 1: going around us, and that trend is continued. So we
Speaker 1: saw how the Hubble telescope helped us, uh narrowed down
Speaker 1: the age of the universe, and how other telescopes have
Speaker 1: have taught us all kinds of things about the our
Speaker 1: whole model of cosmology, the history of the universe, where
Speaker 1: we all come from. And now we want to take
Speaker 1: where we've gone and project forward. Right, So we're looking
Speaker 1: into the future of telescopes. We're gonna be talking about
Speaker 1: some telescopes that are in various stages of being constructed.
Speaker 1: Some of them are just in the concept stage, haven't
Speaker 1: been built. At all. Uh, some of them are space
Speaker 1: bound telescopes. Some of them are here on Earth or
Speaker 1: will be here on Earth. Yeah, and I think, and
Speaker 1: hopefully all will agree with me, I think it is
Speaker 1: best to start with the good old James Webb space
Speaker 1: telescope because I think this is one of the coolest
Speaker 1: things going on in science today. I'm pretty excited about it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This is a sort of the successor to the Hubble, right,
Speaker 1: it's the next generation space observatory, and it's really meant
Speaker 1: to to gaze further than the Hubble ever could. And
Speaker 1: we all hope that the the mirrors aboard the James
Speaker 1: Webb will be properly installed and properly formed, because we
Speaker 1: talked in the last episode about how the Hubble famously
Speaker 1: had an aberration on its primary mirror, a multibillion dollar opperation,
Speaker 1: so we had to send up service missions to repair
Speaker 1: the Hubble telescope to get it working in proper order.
Speaker 1: But that might not be so much an option with
Speaker 1: the James web space Telescope, because well, a couple of
Speaker 1: reasons Shuttle program being being shelves is a big one.
Speaker 1: That's one of them. The other one being that James
Speaker 1: web space telescope is not going to be easily accessible
Speaker 1: because it's not going to be in low Earth orbit. Now,
Speaker 1: this is a large infrared telescope with a six point
Speaker 1: five meter primary mirror. Uh, and you know it's it's
Speaker 1: supposed to look at everything from the beginning of the
Speaker 1: universe up to present day, like to really look at
Speaker 1: not just how how conditions were moments after the Big Bang,
Speaker 1: but how the universe evolved over time, how did galaxies form,
Speaker 1: how did how did stars form? Right, Because you have
Speaker 1: to remember, when you use a telescope that can see
Speaker 1: as far as these space telescopes can, you're essentially using
Speaker 1: some kind of visual time machine. Yeah, you're looking back
Speaker 1: in time. That's exactly right, because light only travels at
Speaker 1: a certain speed. Yeah, the speed of light, as it
Speaker 1: turns out, exactly, So when you peer across the galaxy,
Speaker 1: you're not seeing things happening in real time. You're seeing
Speaker 1: the light that left those things as far away as
Speaker 1: they are, and it's taken all this time for that
Speaker 1: exactly to cross the distance in between to reach you. Right.
Speaker 1: So the further and further you peer out into the universe,
Speaker 1: the further and further back you're seeing in time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: For example, I mean, if you were to look at
Speaker 1: the Sun, don't don't look at the sun, never look
Speaker 1: directly into the Sun. But if you were, you know
Speaker 1: how how far back that goes? Right? About ten minutes
Speaker 1: and eight minutes. Yeah, it takes about eight minutes for
Speaker 1: light from the Sun to reach the Earth, So you
Speaker 1: are actually looking back in time by eight minutes. You're
Speaker 1: not looking at where the Sun is now or how
Speaker 1: the Sun appears now. You're looking at how the Sun
Speaker 1: appeared eight minutes ago. So same sort of of idea,
Speaker 1: except you just extend it and the further out you go,
Speaker 1: the further back in time you're looking. Yeah. So the
Speaker 1: Hubble has been able to show us some really amazing
Speaker 1: ancient stuff like early galaxies in the ultra deep field.
Speaker 1: This stuff is really exciting. The James Web Space Telescope
Speaker 1: is going to let us see even further back right,
Speaker 1: and it's it's the design is really neat. The primary
Speaker 1: mirror actually is segmented and can fold up hexagonal segments.
Speaker 1: So the cool thing about it is that it can
Speaker 1: be folded for launch, because obviously this is a very
Speaker 1: delicate instrument and launch I don't know if you guys
Speaker 1: know this, but if you were to strap a lot
Speaker 1: of rocket fuel to your bottom and then push yourself
Speaker 1: up into space by lightning set rocket fuel, it's a
Speaker 1: bit of a bumpy ride. It's pretty hardcore. It's the
Speaker 1: most metal of all launches. It is. It makes even
Speaker 1: astronauts puke. Yes, astronauts are the best people at not puking. Like,
Speaker 1: of all the people in a not puking contest, they
Speaker 1: would be at the top. So in the puking spectrum,
Speaker 1: they are trained. They are close to to zero p
Speaker 1: right there, the least puky, but sometimes even they puke,
Speaker 1: whereas babies would be way on the other end of
Speaker 1: that spec Yeah, they'd be high puking coefficient, possibly only
Speaker 1: exceeded by the young girl in the Exorcist. But anyway,
Speaker 1: that's not her fault. She's possessed. I didn't well, I
Speaker 1: didn't say it was her fault. I was merely saying,
Speaker 1: but it is a very bumpy ride. And telescopes, of course,
Speaker 1: the mirrors, the huge mirrors that we used to create
Speaker 1: gigantic reflecting telescopes optical and infrared like the James Webb
Speaker 1: is going to be are very delicate. Yes, And the
Speaker 1: James Webb telescope will have four instruments aboard it, the
Speaker 1: near infrared camera or near CAM, the near infrared spectrograph
Speaker 1: or near SPEC, the mid infra red instrument mirror, and
Speaker 1: then finally the fine guidance sensor slash near Infrared imager
Speaker 1: and slit less spectrograph or figures nearest. Yeah, that one
Speaker 1: is that one does not go into acronym form very
Speaker 1: and he was one of my favorite Roman emperors. Didn't
Speaker 1: he didn't he play fiddle while Rome just swallow. Well,
Speaker 1: so so what what ranges of of light? Is this
Speaker 1: thing going to be detecting? From point six to twenty
Speaker 1: eight micrometers in wavelengths? So point six by the way,
Speaker 1: some numbers. So so a micrometer is is essentially one
Speaker 1: thousand nanometers, right, So if you look at the spectrum
Speaker 1: of light and you look at the different wavelengths and
Speaker 1: you look at six d nanometers, that would be point
Speaker 1: six micrometers. That's how far down uh, the and the
Speaker 1: visible spectrum the this will be able to look and
Speaker 1: that that's somewhere in the orange slash red area. So
Speaker 1: you know, you think of your roy G BIV. Your
Speaker 1: longer wavelengths are on the roy side, so it's not
Speaker 1: gonna be able to see anything from yellow on, but
Speaker 1: red and orange it will be able to look at
Speaker 1: as well as infrared. And keep in mind we mentioned
Speaker 1: this in our previous episode when we talked about infrared telescopes.
Speaker 1: The data that we get from these often we end
Speaker 1: up putting it through some sort of visualization software so
Speaker 1: that we add color that we can actually perceive right right,
Speaker 1: which is easier for us to look at. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: you see these amazing gorgeous pictures of space, like the
Speaker 1: amazing nebula right right. Anything from a nebula or a
Speaker 1: supernova that you've ever seen has been a basically an
Speaker 1: artist's rendition of of figuring out what those wavelengths would be,
Speaker 1: sort of sort of scaling it, you know, like if
Speaker 1: if you've ever done music and you know how to
Speaker 1: how to scale octaves down or up the right right. Similarly, though,
Speaker 1: I do want to clarify based on artists rendition, that
Speaker 1: doesn't just mean like a guess. It's a very scientific
Speaker 1: ascessive guessing. Yeah, but it's essentially you take you take
Speaker 1: the data you have and you extrapolate from it in
Speaker 1: order to get us an image that we can perceive
Speaker 1: if you can see, And I'm just saying that the
Speaker 1: really pretty colors are specifically chosen, yes, for reasons, I mean,
Speaker 1: in addition to being mathematically sound, because they are really pretty.
Speaker 1: It's both at the same time. It's true. Yes, So
Speaker 1: we mentioned it's going to be looking at some of
Speaker 1: the earliest things in the universe. What does this really mean?
Speaker 1: So we're saying it's peering beyond where the Hubble scene,
Speaker 1: beyond the altar deep field, way way back in time
Speaker 1: into I guess, beyond the first billion years of the
Speaker 1: universe's existence, right way into the past. What's it going
Speaker 1: to see? So you kind of need to know a
Speaker 1: little bit about the Big Bang theory for this to
Speaker 1: make sense. But in for a good long while compared
Speaker 1: to what the time scale that we humans are used to.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a blink of an eye in the
Speaker 1: galactic time scale, but a good long while. Uh. In
Speaker 1: g and matter, we're all kind of one thing. It
Speaker 1: was the universe was extremely dense, so dense that light
Speaker 1: could not pass through it. Uh. Then it eventually expanded out.
Speaker 1: And once it expanded out, and you started getting some
Speaker 1: cooling and you had energy and mass separating out. You
Speaker 1: started to have the formation of stars and galaxies, and
Speaker 1: it's that first generation of stars that we're looking for
Speaker 1: with James Webb. Yeah, we're really looking at more about
Speaker 1: the formation of the earliest galaxies. But yes, you know
Speaker 1: that those would be of course, yeah, yeah, the earliest
Speaker 1: star probably, So yeah, it's um, maybe we'll find out,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's it's the it's it's a really exciting idea,
Speaker 1: the idea of being able to get a closer look
Speaker 1: at these conditions because a lot of this just exists
Speaker 1: right now in the realm of hypothesis or theory, where
Speaker 1: we have done the calculations and we know what we
Speaker 1: expect to find, but this will be the actual finding. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So that's always exciting because that whole testing hypotheses through
Speaker 1: observation exactly, and it may turn out that we see
Speaker 1: things we didn't expect, which means we have to adjust
Speaker 1: what we believe, which is really exciting. Yeah. So that's
Speaker 1: what scientists absolutely love, um or at least I think
Speaker 1: the theoretical ones do, right right, Um, Okay, So so
Speaker 1: these mirrors that we're talking about, I mean Is it
Speaker 1: the same stuff that's in my bathroom mirror? What's what's
Speaker 1: up with these guys? No? No, no, no. So the
Speaker 1: James Web Telescope we mentioned it has interlocking hexagonal mirrors,
Speaker 1: and that's so it can sort of fold out of
Speaker 1: its cocoon like a butterfly when it reaches the place
Speaker 1: in space where it needs to be. But the mirrors
Speaker 1: are made out of BILLI um, okay like that stuff?
Speaker 1: I mean you don't. You don't want to go breathing
Speaker 1: a lot of berrillium dust? What that's about? All I
Speaker 1: knew about burrillium? Yeah, I I know nothing about billium.
Speaker 1: I have no practice. Keep going to say berrillium sphere,
Speaker 1: but I'm almost certain that was in a Star Trek
Speaker 1: episode actually, from what's that movie with with the Tim
Speaker 1: Allen and oh Galaxy Quest? It always reminds me of
Speaker 1: Sailor Moon. So, okay, let's let's science. So why beryllium
Speaker 1: for the mirrors? Well, there are a lot of properties
Speaker 1: about brillium that make it a really good idea to
Speaker 1: use it in these mirrors. Number one is very light
Speaker 1: and it's strong for its weight. But the telescope's mirror
Speaker 1: also has to hold its shape at the cryogenic temperatures
Speaker 1: in deep space, So this is going to be like
Speaker 1: a negative four hundred degrees fahrenheit or negative trees. See,
Speaker 1: at these extreme temperatures, most materials are going to contract
Speaker 1: or change their volume, which is bad news if you're
Speaker 1: talking about something that is going to allow you to
Speaker 1: get a look at a distant universe. If the shape changes,
Speaker 1: then clearly that that was like one of the issues
Speaker 1: with the hubble. It was that it wasn't that the
Speaker 1: mirrors shape changed, but because of that aberration, we didn't
Speaker 1: get those clear pictures we were expecting. Yeah. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: if you're if you don't remember from from last episode,
Speaker 1: the fraction by which it was off was like some
Speaker 1: some sliver of a human hair's width, and yet it
Speaker 1: was sometimes beyond the accepted UH range of error. So
Speaker 1: we're talking about an incredibly thin margin of error here.
Speaker 1: Creating these telescopes require some really precision engineering. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: so if the stuff to forms, that would be bad,
Speaker 1: but brillianm wouldn't do that. Well. It will deform, because
Speaker 1: pretty much all materials will, but brillium holds up pretty
Speaker 1: well comparatively. It will still deform. So the project engineers.
Speaker 1: They were designing these mirrors, they had to test cool
Speaker 1: them to the temperatures that they'll experience in deep space.
Speaker 1: So they test them, they cool them down to those temperatures,
Speaker 1: record the magnitude of the changes, and then pre correct
Speaker 1: for those temperature based changes. Were polishing the mirrors in
Speaker 1: the final stages of design, I imagine they must have
Speaker 1: used liquid nitrogen will only get you down so cool.
Speaker 1: They must have had to use liquid helium to do that.
Speaker 1: I really don't know what they mean. I think they
Speaker 1: had to send them off to a separate facility for
Speaker 1: the cooling. I imagine, so your average freezer does not
Speaker 1: get down to min uh so. Anyway, what I'm trying
Speaker 1: to convey is that getting something like this to work
Speaker 1: is a marvel of modern science. It is a lot
Speaker 1: of work. Even the smartest people among us are having
Speaker 1: to do really hard work to make this work right,
Speaker 1: and I think they deserve mega respect for what they're doing. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: And there are also one of the other things that
Speaker 1: James Webb telescope is gonna be looking for We're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking a lot about in this episode, which is
Speaker 1: it's gonna look for the physical and chemical properties of exoplanets,
Speaker 1: and the hope there is that we might be able
Speaker 1: to discover exo plants that are either already a habitat
Speaker 1: for life or could be a potent ential habitats. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's not the only space telescope out there that's
Speaker 1: going to be doing this, or even I mean, there's
Speaker 1: some some terrestrial ones that are going to be looking
Speaker 1: for uh planets that could potentially support life as well.
Speaker 1: One of the other ones is the Advanced Technology Large
Speaker 1: Aperture Space Telescope. Yeah, I've heard of this. So basically
Speaker 1: this is a proposal that is for the further future
Speaker 1: that goes even beyond the James Web right. It's and
Speaker 1: it's an optical telescope, So we're still talking about looking
Speaker 1: for light, whether it's visible spectrum yeah, yeah, well, or
Speaker 1: it could be infrared. I mean, you know, optical does
Speaker 1: not necessarily mean that it's not infrared, but it does. Uh.
Speaker 1: It isn't looking for radio signatures or X rays or
Speaker 1: anything like that. Um. And it's still in the design phase,
Speaker 1: and it's supposed to look for the presence of life,
Speaker 1: among other things, on distant planets and and to remove
Speaker 1: all ambiguity about it. You know, we often hear about
Speaker 1: exoplants being discovered and then through analysis we try to
Speaker 1: kind of determine what sort of chemicals might or might
Speaker 1: not be present on that planet. This is supposed to
Speaker 1: be a telescope that will be powerful enough for us
Speaker 1: to get those answers without us saying, well, it probably
Speaker 1: may be because you know, a lot of those upon
Speaker 1: further study end up not panning out, or uh, it
Speaker 1: turns out that we didn't have a good enough picture
Speaker 1: of what we were looking at. In some cases, we
Speaker 1: have exoplanets that you know, quote unquote exoplanets that we
Speaker 1: have identified that have since disappeared, which may mean that
Speaker 1: the original detection was an aberration itself. So this is
Speaker 1: really meant to complex conclusions based on very limited data exactly,
Speaker 1: and it it really does hammer home the fact that
Speaker 1: we have to be careful about these kind of conclusions
Speaker 1: and and for those of us in this room, we
Speaker 1: have to be careful when we're reporting upon it to
Speaker 1: make sure that we add that critical thinking layer and
Speaker 1: say this is what it appears to be, but keep
Speaker 1: in mind that until we have further observations, we cannot
Speaker 1: be sure. So uh, that's just me trying to remind
Speaker 1: myself to to practice good skills. Huh yeah. So the
Speaker 1: acronym here is at last, which just makes me think
Speaker 1: of Fitzgerald songs. But in fact that's all it's gonna
Speaker 1: be playing deep in space. So if you were, if
Speaker 1: you were able to put your ear right up against it,
Speaker 1: less sing the whole song. I'm not going to sing
Speaker 1: the whole song. You already made fun to the end.
Speaker 1: You made it fun of me for singing uh, oh
Speaker 1: Susannah earlier. So listeners, you need to know this. Jonathan
Speaker 1: Strickland knows the other stanzas to Oh Susanna. He knows
Speaker 1: the ones beyond the first. Not only is he a
Speaker 1: terrific podcast, what you're what you're telling them is that
Speaker 1: I know the verses, not just the chorus. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: might be right anyway, that that's beside the point. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about telescope Okay, well alright, so so what the
Speaker 1: deal last, Well, it's another ACID project. It's through the
Speaker 1: Space Telescope Science Institute, which also does it did run
Speaker 1: the Hubble program, and it's running the James Web Space
Speaker 1: Telescope program as well. Um, and like you guys said,
Speaker 1: it's still in the design stage. The hope is that
Speaker 1: it would be launching somewhere around like so it's still
Speaker 1: pretty far out from the current day. Uh. And they're
Speaker 1: entertaining three different mirror types right now, aiming for less
Speaker 1: complexity and or mass than the Hubble and James Webb,
Speaker 1: but with better angular resolution and sensitivity like as much
Speaker 1: as like like two thousand times the sensitivity of the Hubble,
Speaker 1: so it would be able to detect much fainter bodies
Speaker 1: than would that that will become important to We'll be
Speaker 1: talking about some telescopes that are going to be looking
Speaker 1: at looking for stuff that a lot of other telescopes
Speaker 1: will miss, but we really really need to know about them,
Speaker 1: right right, Yeah, you had a note in here about
Speaker 1: how it's going to be looking for for biosignatures of life, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like things like molecular oxygen, water and methane. This
Speaker 1: is the sort of stuff that you know, again, we've
Speaker 1: we've looked at like spectral analysis of exoplanets and said, oh,
Speaker 1: this might be methane on this planet, which would be
Speaker 1: a biosignature that would be an indication that there's some
Speaker 1: form of organic life. They're not necessarily the only source
Speaker 1: of it. I feel like I've heard that about oxygen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, because at least we know about Earth that
Speaker 1: Earth didn't have an oxygen atmosphere until it was created
Speaker 1: by I believe it was cyano back here. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: then if you remember, you know, we've we've had some
Speaker 1: close calls with detecting methane on on nearby bodies. Uh
Speaker 1: not that long ago. That pan did not pan out
Speaker 1: for us. You remember hearing about Mars and the supposed
Speaker 1: detection of methane. Did we bring it with us? Yes,
Speaker 1: we brought it with us. That was the problem. So
Speaker 1: now in the case with telescopes, we don't have to
Speaker 1: worry about that because we're just looking. We're not actually
Speaker 1: sending a probe there what that could potentially end up
Speaker 1: contaminating contaminating the sample exactly. Yeah. Um One interesting thing
Speaker 1: that I was reading about when I read about this,
Speaker 1: that I hadn't particularly thought about before, and it goes
Speaker 1: back to what we were saying earlier about launching um SO.
Speaker 1: One of the things that the designers have to think
Speaker 1: about is how to get these giant suckers into space.
Speaker 1: Um SO, two of their mere concepts here hypothetically compatible
Speaker 1: with another thing that doesn't exist yet, which is NASA's
Speaker 1: proposed Space Launch System or SLS, and um the third,
Speaker 1: which I think is not really their favored design, would
Speaker 1: be able to go up on one of the U.
Speaker 1: S Air Force Department of Defense evolved expandable launch vehicles
Speaker 1: like the Delta four and the Atlas five, which are
Speaker 1: currently in use. So and we may also see something
Speaker 1: like SpaceX step up and design either a vehicle specifically
Speaker 1: for these or modifying one of their existing designs to
Speaker 1: allow for this kind of thing, because we're already seeing
Speaker 1: that sort of uh collaboration in getting astronauts to space.
Speaker 1: That was a pretty recent discussion where NASA said that
Speaker 1: a SpaceX capsule would soon be taking astronauts up to
Speaker 1: the International Space Station, which is pretty exciting stuff. So
Speaker 1: we may see that as well. It's always kind of
Speaker 1: terrifying to me whenever I read about one of these
Speaker 1: really cool projects that is proposed and not yet developed
Speaker 1: that is going to depend upon another really cool project
Speaker 1: that's proposed but not yet developed, because if one or
Speaker 1: the other falls through, then you don't have your project certainly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, just you know, it just added another interesting
Speaker 1: layer of it to me, which I guess is of course,
Speaker 1: if you really think about it, it's obvious. But you know,
Speaker 1: sitting there and saying like, well, so what we're gonna
Speaker 1: do with this extremely expensive, like billion dollar, highly precise mirror.
Speaker 1: We're going to strap a lot of rocket fuel to it, um,
Speaker 1: and then we're going to light a fire in the rockets.
Speaker 1: Sounding a lot like a MythBusters episode right now, like
Speaker 1: we've built this amazing thing, how do we blow it up? Uh? Now?
Speaker 1: The next one I wanted to talk about, I imagine
Speaker 1: the saying just kidding, we're going to hand it over
Speaker 1: to the Russians. Also is the Transiting Exoplanets Survey Satellite
Speaker 1: or TESTS, which I just like that acronym so. TESTS
Speaker 1: is scheduled to launch in the near future and will
Speaker 1: perform a survey of the sky in search of habitable
Speaker 1: planets in the Goldilocks zone. So that's in that that
Speaker 1: zone of orbits that we believe would be conducive to
Speaker 1: supporting life based upon what we know from our sample
Speaker 1: size of one planet that has life on it that
Speaker 1: we know of UM, and then also just looking for
Speaker 1: exo plants in general. So it will cover four times
Speaker 1: more area than the Kepler thirty seven B telescope, which
Speaker 1: also is known for looking for exoplanets. Okay, so this
Speaker 1: is sort of an exoplanet hunter that is designed to
Speaker 1: cast a wide net. Yes, you have to really, because
Speaker 1: you know, we have we have ideas of how many
Speaker 1: exoplanets must be out there based upon the information we've
Speaker 1: discovered from the ones we've seen, right a lot, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like tons of them, and this would help us either
Speaker 1: verify that or refute that. Both of those would be important.
Speaker 1: So yeah, exciting either way. Ye. And then we have
Speaker 1: the European extremely Large Telescope. I added that because I
Speaker 1: love that name, that the europe larger. European extremely Large
Speaker 1: Telescope sounds like something out of Douglas Atoms. It makes
Speaker 1: the European Large. The European Large Telescope has got terrible
Speaker 1: envy of the extremely Large Telescope. Well, even the very
Speaker 1: inadequate European very Large Telescope has got to feel a
Speaker 1: little threatened. It's kind of feelt a little bummed. Well
Speaker 1: right now, it's still doing pretty well because this is
Speaker 1: the one that hasn't been built yet. No, this isn't no.
Speaker 1: After this comes to the European hilariously large, the ludicrously
Speaker 1: large telescope, when when you notice that the Earth's orbit
Speaker 1: has been slightly altered due to the presence of the
Speaker 1: telescope there, Well, this is actually an Earth based telescope,
Speaker 1: right yea, which while they suffer some disadvantages compared to
Speaker 1: space telescopes obviously they have to deal with the atmosphere
Speaker 1: and things like that, but they also have advantages in
Speaker 1: that they're right here and we can work on them,
Speaker 1: and they're easier to build and get in place. Right.
Speaker 1: We don't have to worry about space junk, yeah, encountering one.
Speaker 1: We don't. And if something does go wrong, like you say,
Speaker 1: we could have maintenance and repair there immediately, as opposed
Speaker 1: to well, now we have to plan a mission, we
Speaker 1: have to train people, we have to get them up
Speaker 1: into space, and then we have figure out how to
Speaker 1: get them back down safely. I mean that's anytime you're
Speaker 1: talking about any kind of space mission that's a maintenance issue.
Speaker 1: It's a huge endeavor and of course it costs millions
Speaker 1: and millions of dollars. Not so much if you're doing
Speaker 1: a maintenance uh here on Earth. I mean pretty expensive comparatively, Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly in the grand scheme of things, tell me about
Speaker 1: this one. So it's it's optical and near infra red,
Speaker 1: so we're talking visible light to near infrared. And it
Speaker 1: will have a thirty nine meter main mirror. That's so
Speaker 1: the largest telescope in the world right now. We talked
Speaker 1: about it in the last episode is the Grand Telescopio
Speaker 1: U Karias in Spain on the Canary Islands, and it
Speaker 1: has a ten point four meter mirror, So this one
Speaker 1: will be a thirty nine meter mirrors almost four times. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's enormous. So it'll be searching for earthlike planets and
Speaker 1: the habitable zones, just like we were talking about with tests,
Speaker 1: except it will be doing it here on Earth, and
Speaker 1: it'll also be looking for uh other. It will also
Speaker 1: be doing other projects in astronomy and cosmology, including a
Speaker 1: search into the universe's past. So very similar to what
Speaker 1: we had talked about with the James Webb and it's
Speaker 1: going to be at the Let's see if I can
Speaker 1: get this Carol amazonis the mountain in Chile? Is that
Speaker 1: Caro or Sarah? I would think it was Sarah. It
Speaker 1: could be it could be uh, you know that my, my,
Speaker 1: my Latin languages are terrible. I'm more of a Germanic
Speaker 1: kind of guy, so it will be a lot of
Speaker 1: hilarity with me trying to Hey, I'm just saying that
Speaker 1: that's my my, your aistic background, yea thought connect. So
Speaker 1: another another enormous telescope plan for Chile is the giant
Speaker 1: Magellan Telescope, which is going to have a twenty four
Speaker 1: point five meter primary mirror. Uh and although that mirror
Speaker 1: is actually gonna be made up of seven eight point
Speaker 1: four meter diameter segments, so it's another segment and mirror
Speaker 1: that collectively acts as one primary mirror. And while we're
Speaker 1: in Chili, how about we visit the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.
Speaker 1: That's a yeah, because it's gonna be awesome. It's got
Speaker 1: a three point two giga pixel camera. Forget your merry
Speaker 1: canna understand what that means, but okay, yeah, well I
Speaker 1: mean I do, but that's just very that's beyond my
Speaker 1: personal conception of Yes, Okay, this camera is going to
Speaker 1: scan the entire sky twice a week in panoramic shots,
Speaker 1: so you're gonna get the entire view of the night
Speaker 1: sky from this perspective in Chile twice a week, and um,
Speaker 1: it's gonna help us make a really detailed sky map
Speaker 1: which could potentially lead to billions of discoveries of new bodies,
Speaker 1: from stars to asteroids. And according to to one researcher
Speaker 1: who works on the project, it will be the first
Speaker 1: time that astronomers have cataloged more objects than there are
Speaker 1: living people on Earth. So very exciting. Also, you know,
Speaker 1: being able to detect those asteroids very important, just as
Speaker 1: I was kind of alluding to that earlier in the podcast.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that a lot of people
Speaker 1: have brought to our attention is that, you know, asteroids
Speaker 1: have a potential of colliding with Earth. We've heard about
Speaker 1: this kind of thing several times in the last few years,
Speaker 1: and uh, we don't have a whole lot of contingency
Speaker 1: plans for what to do in order to avoid such
Speaker 1: a thing, because if it's a large enough asteroid, that
Speaker 1: can be an extinction level event. Right even if it
Speaker 1: doesn't directly cause enough damage to wipe out all life,
Speaker 1: it may indirectly cause it. So being able to detect
Speaker 1: these asteroids earlier gives us the opportunity to come up
Speaker 1: with a plan to move the asteroid out of the way,
Speaker 1: which is the most likely, uh choice that we would
Speaker 1: have the solution to that problem. Less likely would be
Speaker 1: sending up Bruce Willis to blow it up with like
Speaker 1: a nuclear bomb, because that probably wouldn't do us any good.
Speaker 1: I mean, we could try. Well, you know, I would
Speaker 1: hate to lose Bruce Willis. Yeah. Well, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Have you seen the Last to die Hard movies? I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm just saying so, although those I can't really blame
Speaker 1: Bruce Willis. Speaking of Bruce Willis, let's talk about biceps. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We we talked about BICEP two in her last episode,
Speaker 1: and Lauren and I talked about bicep to quite a
Speaker 1: bit when we did our update super brief refresher what
Speaker 1: is bicep to what it looks for the cosmic microwave
Speaker 1: background radiation and specifically looking for polarization to give an
Speaker 1: indication for the presence of gravitational waves, which would in
Speaker 1: turn be a support for the inflation model of the
Speaker 1: Big Bang theory. Lauren and I talked about how some
Speaker 1: of the findings that came out of a an announcement
Speaker 1: that we heard back in March from the BICEP team
Speaker 1: I have since been not disproven, but certainly called into
Speaker 1: question due to the amount of space dust which might
Speaker 1: have been mucking up the senseries. Right, So BICEP two
Speaker 1: did all of its work from two thousand ten to
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve, I think, and UH, BICEP three would
Speaker 1: be the the next phase. It would be the next
Speaker 1: cosmic microwave background radiation observatory, really the South Pole South
Speaker 1: Pole YEA and UH. It will have two thousand, five
Speaker 1: hundred sixty detectors operating at a one hundred giga hurts
Speaker 1: frequency um and it'll again be studying the same thing
Speaker 1: that the BICEP to array studied. And the hope is
Speaker 1: that even if the the information from BICEP too hands
Speaker 1: out to be less spectacular than what we first believed,
Speaker 1: this will be able to look for the trace evidence
Speaker 1: of gravitational waves that might have been you know, somewhat
Speaker 1: boosted space dust. But we'll be able to get more
Speaker 1: to the truth of the matter, is the hope. Okay,
Speaker 1: I got another one. Okay, how to blow your mind
Speaker 1: with why don't we put telescopes on the moon but
Speaker 1: to look back at the Earth. Tom, I didn't even
Speaker 1: think about that that that that might happen. Who knows
Speaker 1: that could that could happen. No, So we've talked, we
Speaker 1: talked in the last podcast. In a little bit in
Speaker 1: this one, I think about some of the problems with
Speaker 1: having observatories here on Earth. You've got to deal with
Speaker 1: moisture in the atmosphere and that gets in the way, dust,
Speaker 1: light pollution, all kinds of things like that. If you're
Speaker 1: talking about an optical telescope, atmospheric you have to see through.
Speaker 1: So you have to place your observatories very carefully. You
Speaker 1: want to put them like at a high altitude in
Speaker 1: a very dry place. Sure. Sure, And even if you're
Speaker 1: talking about like like infrared telescopes are kind of poor
Speaker 1: on Earth because the heat of the Earth is going
Speaker 1: to mess steff up, right, they have to be very sensitive.
Speaker 1: And the same thing is true if you're talking about
Speaker 1: radio telescopes. I mean, we have radio telescopes here on Earth,
Speaker 1: but they get interference things on all of the radio waves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's a lot of I mean we're using
Speaker 1: different frequencies, sure, but right there's just I think I
Speaker 1: mentioned in the last podcast that I had. I had
Speaker 1: read something a while ago while I was researching a
Speaker 1: blog post. I think it was for last year that
Speaker 1: if you were to stand on the surface of the
Speaker 1: Moon and activate a cellular telephone, that would create a
Speaker 1: signal that radio astronomers on Earth would consider pretty strong.
Speaker 1: You would also have terrible reception and you would very
Speaker 1: quickly die. Well, I think you made the same joke
Speaker 1: the last time. I made the die joke last time,
Speaker 1: because you were talking about you wouldn't necessarily die like
Speaker 1: a Look, you're smart. They've all heard it before, Jonathan.
Speaker 1: This is just for us anyway. So these things have
Speaker 1: to be very sensitive, and what are you going to do?
Speaker 1: How do you how do you shield them from all
Speaker 1: of the radio frequency activity on the Earth. So well,
Speaker 1: one idea is put a giant hunk of rock between
Speaker 1: the Earth's generating all these radio signals and these radio telescopes.
Speaker 1: So you're thinking of actually having all the telescopes on
Speaker 1: the far side of the Moon, which is not, by
Speaker 1: the way, the dark side of the Moon, at least
Speaker 1: not all the time. No, no light still hits it,
Speaker 1: just not when we can see it, right, because we
Speaker 1: don't see it. The moon is tidally locked with Earth.
Speaker 1: So that means the same face of the Moon faces
Speaker 1: the Earth all the time, but all surfaces of the Moon,
Speaker 1: at some point or another get light from the Sun. Right.
Speaker 1: Confusing the fact that there is a permanent far side
Speaker 1: of the Moon with the with the misconception that there's
Speaker 1: a permanent dark side of the Moon is kind of
Speaker 1: like how a baby thinks if you cover its eyes
Speaker 1: it has disappeared. That's not true. You've blow in my
Speaker 1: mind here, Joe. Uh No, under that light can fall
Speaker 1: on things even if we don't see them. So the
Speaker 1: moon goes all the way around, it gets sun on
Speaker 1: both sides, yes, but but it does not. It does
Speaker 1: have a side that is permanently facing away from the Earth.
Speaker 1: And in fact, the first time we saw that was
Speaker 1: when the Apollo mission uh circled behind was in lunar orbit,
Speaker 1: and they took pictures of the surface which were really
Speaker 1: kind of creepy looking. That a lot of frazers. But
Speaker 1: now the talk is about putting telescopes on that side.
Speaker 1: Like you were saying, Joe, it's completely isolated from all
Speaker 1: the interference that would be generated on Earth, and you
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about the atmospheric distortion, so you
Speaker 1: could have different types of telescopes, and in fact, we've
Speaker 1: heard proposals for things like radio telescopes and optical telescopes
Speaker 1: on the surface of the Moon on the far side,
Speaker 1: which would be pretty cool. It's also a huge challenge.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not easy for us to Obviously, we
Speaker 1: haven't gone back to the Moon with a manned mission
Speaker 1: since the seventies, so, uh, you know, it's it's not
Speaker 1: easy for us to do this necessarily. But I think
Speaker 1: most of the um proposals I saw suggested using rovers
Speaker 1: and to to deploy. Yeah, so you'd be using robe lots,
Speaker 1: not actual people to set these things up. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of cool that there are some issues.
Speaker 1: One of them is that if you're using a radio telescope,
Speaker 1: you have to power the telescope, right and and so
Speaker 1: how do you generate power on the except then the
Speaker 1: sun is actually emitting radio waves, so the only time
Speaker 1: you would be able to use the telescope is when
Speaker 1: you're getting the most interference. So what you would need
Speaker 1: if you had if you had some kind of battery
Speaker 1: packs or something, then you could you could charge when
Speaker 1: it's not in use and use the telescope when it's
Speaker 1: that's a possibility that The other one that I remember
Speaker 1: reading was proposed, I think it was earlier this year,
Speaker 1: was the idea that you could make this base near
Speaker 1: the south pole of the Moon and so mounting solar
Speaker 1: rays on the peaks of the south pole of the Moon.
Speaker 1: They would constantly receive sunlight in all directions, and then
Speaker 1: having something down in a crater perhaps where it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be yeah, just so slightly off to the other side
Speaker 1: where or shielded from the sun is where you would
Speaker 1: have your telescope array. I've also heard of using nuclear
Speaker 1: pellets to power these essentially the same way that a
Speaker 1: lot of our Yeah, I think we should get a
Speaker 1: lot of nuclear power on the Moon, I mean just
Speaker 1: in general, I mean, even if we're not really using it.
Speaker 1: I think that the more nuclear way stations we can have,
Speaker 1: if there's nothing, if nothing else, it's going to provide
Speaker 1: the fodder for numerous James Bond films right road, which
Speaker 1: is really what we're all aiming for. The forward thinking. Okay,
Speaker 1: speaking of kind of James Bond sounding concepts, this next one, uh,
Speaker 1: sounds so much like science fiction to me, and it's
Speaker 1: a real thing that's happening, and I adore it so much.
Speaker 1: So there's a concept for a lunar liquid mirror telescope UM.
Speaker 1: And we don't have one of these on the Moon yet,
Speaker 1: but some do exist on Earth. And the idea is
Speaker 1: to use a reflective liquid like mercury in a rotating
Speaker 1: dish instead of a traditional you know, solid illuminized glass mirror.
Speaker 1: And so the rotation of the dish, if it's if
Speaker 1: it's done, you know, very precisely, will place gravitational and
Speaker 1: inertial forces on the liquid that that let's form this
Speaker 1: this uniform, perfect parabolic shape for reflection that's also self correcting,
Speaker 1: so you wouldn't get any of that hubblesque trouble with
Speaker 1: imperfect mirrors that cost billions to replace. Um. And like
Speaker 1: I said, there are a few on Earth. UM. The
Speaker 1: biggest is the large Zenith the telescope, which is in
Speaker 1: British Columbia in Canada. Um it's almost twenty feet across.
Speaker 1: Uh so yeah, yeah, not not too not too shabby.
Speaker 1: And UM, putting one of these suckers on the Moon
Speaker 1: would be pretty red because you know, the Moon, as
Speaker 1: we have said, right, doesn't have that pesky Earth atmosphere UM.
Speaker 1: But it also would create a bunch of problems. For example,
Speaker 1: the temperature would make mercury freeze uh, thereby not making
Speaker 1: it a very useful liquid telescope UM uh. And that
Speaker 1: also need to design a new dish support system that
Speaker 1: would that would let it rotate smoothly. The large Zenith,
Speaker 1: for example, uses an air cushion, which would not work
Speaker 1: without you know air UM, so that's problematic. The lunar
Speaker 1: atmosphere is sparse. To be fair, they're they're talking, they're
Speaker 1: talking about using um like a superconductor, uh, electromagnetic. So
Speaker 1: the quantum lock totally, totally. And the really cool thing
Speaker 1: other than the fact that it's a mirror made of liquid,
Speaker 1: is that they're a lot cheaper than solid mirror telescopes UM.
Speaker 1: You know, they can't be rotated the way that we
Speaker 1: do mirror you know, traditional mirrors, because the liquid would
Speaker 1: spill out UM, which would also make it less useful UM.
Speaker 1: But in the end it really simplifies construction. UM. And
Speaker 1: a moon base would be really great for infrared telescopy
Speaker 1: because the base temperature is so low, you know, we
Speaker 1: we wouldn't run into the same kind of trouble that
Speaker 1: we do on Earth. Um, you know, there hasn't been
Speaker 1: a whole lot of buzz about this kind of thing
Speaker 1: since around two eight, but at the time people were
Speaker 1: projecting possible launches out into the twenties or so. So
Speaker 1: I think that we should all keep our ears out
Speaker 1: and see if anyone's been working on it. That's really cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I wonder if the idea of having telescopes
Speaker 1: on the Moon is one of those that might not
Speaker 1: be self justifying, But if we ever were to create
Speaker 1: a colony at one of the poles of the Moon,
Speaker 1: it would be sort of a logical extension of that. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and there's a lot of focus to to
Speaker 1: use the Moon as sort of the proving grounds for deeper, yeah,
Speaker 1: deeper explorations into space, particularly a manned mission to Mars.
Speaker 1: I mean, NASA's current proposed approach involves asteroids in the
Speaker 1: Moon as sort of a stepping stone to get to Mars,
Speaker 1: so it totally makes sense. And they're also talking about
Speaker 1: using the polar regions of the Moon for this one,
Speaker 1: because that's I think, basically just the best place to
Speaker 1: put this kind of stuff. But now, guys, I want
Speaker 1: to take a look at the future and ask a
Speaker 1: question about the limits of telescope technology. So you're gonna
Speaker 1: look through a telescope at the future of telescopes to
Speaker 1: see the limit of telescope. So when you look through
Speaker 1: a telescope, you're looking at the past. That's true. The
Speaker 1: further back you look, the further back you look backwards
Speaker 1: through a telescope at the future. Okay, So I want
Speaker 1: to know what constrains the upper limit of telescope resolution
Speaker 1: because we can see a certain distance out. I mean,
Speaker 1: telescopes obviously have better resolution than they used to. But
Speaker 1: what if we want to see the kinds of things
Speaker 1: that are just absolutely beyond the limits of what we
Speaker 1: can see today. What if we want to be able
Speaker 1: to directly image the surface of planets in solar systems
Speaker 1: halfway across the galaxy? What prevents us from doing that?
Speaker 1: Do we just need really big lenses? Yeah, that's the question. Basically,
Speaker 1: I wanted to know. Is it a har word limit
Speaker 1: imposed by physics, Is it just something that you just
Speaker 1: can't do that, or is it something about the nature
Speaker 1: of telescopes a technological problem that we could actually achieve
Speaker 1: if we just build better and better telescopes, larger sizes,
Speaker 1: more precision engineering of the mirrors. And I actually passed
Speaker 1: this request along to some of our contacts at NASA
Speaker 1: and got a really exciting answer. That's awesome. So yeah,
Speaker 1: the answer came back from Dr John Mather, the two
Speaker 1: thousand six Nobel Laureate in physics and the senior project
Speaker 1: scientist on the James Web Space Telescope, and he he
Speaker 1: sent me back this answer. It's said as follows. Telescopes
Speaker 1: are limited by the wave nature of light, so that
Speaker 1: a point like object appears to have an angular size
Speaker 1: of at least lambda divided by d, where lambda is
Speaker 1: the wavelength, meaning the wavelength of the light, and d
Speaker 1: is the diameter of the telescope. So that means if
Speaker 1: you want a sharper image and you can't change the
Speaker 1: wavelength of the light you're studying, you absolutely have to
Speaker 1: have a bigger telescope, even if you're building it in
Speaker 1: outer space. So I think what he's saying there is
Speaker 1: that we we can resolve greater images farther and farther
Speaker 1: out there, but there is a size restriction. I mean,
Speaker 1: the problem is you've got to build bigger and bigger
Speaker 1: mirror arrays, and we've already talked earlier in the podcast
Speaker 1: about how hard that is to do and to get
Speaker 1: them into space, especially Dr Matther says, but here on
Speaker 1: the ground we have another problem. The atmosphere we love
Speaker 1: to breathe is always changing and making the images we
Speaker 1: see in the telescope dance around with tremendous effort. We
Speaker 1: can build equipment to compensate for that. It's called adaptive optics,
Speaker 1: and it can work quite well, but we still need
Speaker 1: a bigger telescope if we want to get a sharper image. Interesting. So,
Speaker 1: really the limit is size, well, size and whatever light
Speaker 1: you're using to study, so exactly right. So there is
Speaker 1: a physics limit, but it's not a physics limit on
Speaker 1: the resolution that we can see. Ultimately, it's a physics
Speaker 1: limit that constrains what we can see based on the
Speaker 1: size of the telescope, based on what we can build
Speaker 1: or have built so far. Rather interesting. So, uh, that
Speaker 1: that's really cool. I'm glad that you were able to
Speaker 1: get that that answer. That's awesome. Yeah, so big thanks
Speaker 1: to Dr Mather and also thanks to Maggie Zetti at NASA.
Speaker 1: For putting us in touch with him. That was a
Speaker 1: really interesting thing to learn. Yeah, yeah, I feel like
Speaker 1: we could probably say this every episode, but thanks NASA. Yep,
Speaker 1: I agree, we can say that, and now we will one, two, three,
Speaker 1: Thanks NASA. Well, and thank you guys, you listeners out
Speaker 1: there who are listening to our show. I hope that
Speaker 1: you really enjoyed this episode. Remember, you can get in
Speaker 1: touch with us and let us know what topics you
Speaker 1: would like us to cover in the future about the future.
Speaker 1: Let us know on Twitter or Google Plus or Facebook.
Speaker 1: We have the handle fw thinking over at Twitter and
Speaker 1: Google Plus. Just search f W thinking at Facebook. I'll
Speaker 1: pop right up and let us know what you think.
Speaker 1: We want to hear from you, and you'll hear from
Speaker 1: us again really soon. For more on this topic in
Speaker 1: the future of technology, I'll visit forward Thinking dot com.
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