Radio telescope faces "extremely concerning" threat from satellite constellations - SpaceNews:
A multibillion-dollar radio telescope is moving into its construction phase while still working to raise funding and deal with satellite megaconstellations whose interference "change the game" for their plans.
In a June 29 talk at the annual meeting of the European Astronomical Society, Philip Diamond, director general of the Square Kilometer Array (SKA)[*] Observatory, announced that the observatory's council had formally approval plans to move into the construction phase of the radio telescope.
SKA is two separate facilities. SKA-Low, in Western Australia, will eventually be an array of more than 130,000 antennas performing observations at low frequencies. SKA-Mid will feature 197 dishes in South Africa for midrange radio frequencies, including 64 dishes of the existing MeerKAT array there.
The council's decision allowed the SKA to move into its construction phase on July 1. "We won't see shovels in the round on the first of July," he said, but rather requests for proposal to build various aspects of the two facilities. The observatory expects that construction to be completed by 2029.
The SKA is designed to support a wide range of astronomy research, from studies of dark energy and pulsars to astrobiology. The concept for the SKA dates back three decades, when astronomers first considered concepts for a radio telescope that, as the name suggests, would span a square kilometer. Those concepts later evolved to the current design with facilities on two continents.
One technological challenge that has also evolved over that time is radio-frequency interference. "We radio astronomers have been used to dealing with the interference from satellites and aircraft systems," Diamond said at a June 29 press briefing. "What the megaconstellations do is that they change the game for us."
The difference is the sheer number of satellites, with proposals for potentially many tens of thousands of satellites. Many will be operating on frequencies that SKA-Mid, which operates between 350 megahertz and 15.3 gigahertz, is tuned to observe. While radio astronomy has priority for a few bands in that range, the satellites will be broadcasting — legally, he acknowledged — on many others.
Diamond said the SKA was in technical discussions with satellite operators on mitigation measures "that would significantly limit the impact on the SKA telescopes." He didn't elaborate on the specific measures.
[*] SKA: Square Kilometer Array.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 06 2021, @02:59AM
Before the reggae mon...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 06 2021, @03:02AM (1 child)
SN editors are illiterate.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by FatPhil on Tuesday July 06 2021, @08:25AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Frosty Piss on Tuesday July 06 2021, @04:32AM (11 children)
This is simply an eventuality of the progression of technology, and there is no real point in *whining* about it. For the most part, many aspects of *terrestrial* observation of space is fading out. New systems in low Earth orbit or maybe a little further out *are the future*. Satellite constellations are here to stay, and perviserating about it is a waste of time.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 06 2021, @04:48AM (2 children)
Nope. I want my night sky for astro-photography. Some just-for-profit idiot can go away. Worst part is that the current idiot is in the "regulated" US, and not some rogue nation. IranNet sending up clouds of mini-sats to spew interweb / news. Bet you that is N.Korea sent them up there would be a different tone of screaming. The silence of the US on this is almost deafening.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 06 2021, @05:30AM
Astronomers haven't owned the sky since the introduction of the streetlight.
Starlink (US owned) has already gone to considerable lengths to accommodate optical astronomers and are working directly with the NRAO to minimize or eliminate interference with radio astronomers worldwide. Regulators haven't spoken up because they don't need to.
https://public.nrao.edu/news/nrao-statement-commsats/ [nrao.edu]
OneWeb (UK owned) had to be ordered by the FCC to talk to NRAO as a condition of their US broadcast licence.
https://spacenews.com/radio-astronomers-worried-about-oneweb-interference/ [spacenews.com]
https://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2017/db0623/FCC-17-77A1.pdf [fcc.gov] (see section 10)
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Tuesday July 06 2021, @10:37AM
Well you've made your own personal desires and interests known. I don't see what you think you can do about it though. It's certainly not your decision, and it's certainly not going to be part of any political platform.
Your best move is to help form and fund a lobbying group that can take on the interests of those people that want constellation satellites. Like me.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 06 2021, @06:04AM
Put profits over science and you'll get morons rioting in the Capitol building convinced to the core their idiocy is as good as science. Take about 15-20 years, judging by the peak of "teach the controversy"
(Score: 5, Insightful) by FatPhil on Tuesday July 06 2021, @08:28AM (2 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday July 06 2021, @08:59PM (1 child)
Imagine an orbital "billboard" matrix of solar powered bright LEDs. Each "pixel" cluster would be quite some distance from its neighbors. Even 320 x 240 could display decent ad logos.
You can enjoy the nighttime beauty of a bright red and white Coke-a-Cola logo moving across the sky at significant speed.
Other ads would do their part to make the sky even more colorful than just red and white.
It will be a bright (pun intended) glorious future!
Then they will offer orbital animated advertising banners.
Some will complain about seizures. But hey, it's progress!
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday July 07 2021, @12:15PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday July 06 2021, @11:17AM (2 children)
> New systems in low Earth orbit or maybe a little further out *are the future
As I said elsewhere , SKA is *literally* a Square Kilometre. So you need to envisage an orbiting station that is a square kilometre (1x1 km, 10/6 miles x 10/6 miles) in size to replace this ground-based observatory. In fact, because of use of interferometry it may be a bit more severe requirement. This is not Hubble!
ps: Car analogy... "Cars are simply an eventuality of the progression of technology, and there is no real point whining about poisonous gases emitted."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 06 2021, @11:54AM
Actually, it seems possible.
The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope has a collecting area of 0.196 km^2. Five of those would do the trick. A modular space telescope built in orbit could have an even larger diameter than FAST, since the structure would be experiencing microgravity. Sending up many smaller ones is also possible.
It doesn't really matter since it sounds like the threat to SKA will not be dire, especially with the "mitigation measures". For starters, they can have the satellites not broadcasting to the areas containing SKA.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 06 2021, @07:06PM
Are you suggesting that the SKA infrastructure *literally* covers every square inch of a square kilometer? Because that would be daft. Just as daft as thinking it would need an orbiting station a square kilometer in size to replace it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 06 2021, @01:35PM
"I demand that everybody stop trying to think about solutions, because the only solutions that I can imagine mean somebody saying no to me (and/or profits)."
Kessler syndrome, look it up. It would put an end to space for humanity, and that includes satellite weather forecasting.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Barenflimski on Tuesday July 06 2021, @05:11AM (20 children)
As much as I think radio astronomy is important, so is terrestrial internet.
I'm the kind of guy that would happily pack a Starlink satellite dish along with solar panels and a battery pack to the middle of the Amazon Forest.
I hope these engineers can mitigate the issues with the satellites, but I suspect that the "Dark Side of the Moon" is the only safe space for radio astronomy going forward.
(Score: 1) by Catalyst on Tuesday July 06 2021, @05:33AM (1 child)
Kinda surprised that nobody has asked Elon to just put receiving antennas on the Earth opposite side of the starlink sats and have the whole constellation act as one huge radio telescope...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 06 2021, @06:02AM
Starlink satellites aren't anywhere near big enough to carry dishes large enough for radio astronomy. They also move so they can't use interferometry to act as one huge antenna.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 06 2021, @05:57AM (2 children)
Starlink can geofence radio observatories and have any satellite within range go radio silent. They are already working with the NRAO to get it set up, so as long as you stay outside the RO blackout zones your internet uplink should be fine. (Protip: Don't take cellphones into those zones either.)
Amazon Kuiper is even more astronomer friendly: You can't interfere if you don't launch anything. We'll see if that holds.
In the other direction, the FCC had to strong-arm OneWeb to get them to even talk to radio astronomers, but they have been doing so.
(Score: 3, Informative) by hendrikboom on Tuesday July 06 2021, @07:19PM (1 child)
Zones like the United States National Radio Quiet Zone [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 06 2021, @07:48PM
I couldn't remember what it was called. Thank you. :)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Tuesday July 06 2021, @06:11AM (14 children)
Because porn, Facebook (but I repeat myself) and Netflix must flow uninterrupted, right?
And God forbids touching the profits of the broadband providers by asking them to use those subsidy billions/year to actually build wired internet, we simply must have satellites, it is written somewhere in the Old Testament.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Barenflimski on Tuesday July 06 2021, @06:23AM (13 children)
Not really what I was thinking. Cynically though, you're right, this is unfortunately what 98% of the population that receives new internet will probably use it for.
For the other 2% though, it will be important. I've seen firsthand what it can do when you bring internet to parts of the world that have never seen a library.
To have access to banking, knowledge, literature and science is life changing. Even the folks in the bush can find these basics important and life changing.
You might not feel the same after you've sat with a group of kids in Africa who have never seen a National Geographic documentary on Lions before. Its fairly exhilarating and eye opening to see how they react.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Tuesday July 06 2021, @06:30AM (10 children)
A satellite constellation is not a required mean to achieve this end, right?
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday July 06 2021, @08:51AM (5 children)
But no, definitly, the problem can only be solved by flotillae of floating balloons, and megaclusters of satellites.
What? You say they've scrapped the balloon idea that everyone thought was retarded? So they aren't perfect with their planning after all?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday July 06 2021, @09:46AM (4 children)
I imagine a policeman dragging a coconut fiber rope, to tie tight its end to some gigantic cups (for impedance matching). So that the operators at the ends can place a call [youtube.com] about 3-4bps, to the delight of the internet users [youtu.be].
And then I realize that analog wireless communication is so much richer [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday July 06 2021, @11:58AM (3 children)
I saw lots of pings transmitted, but not one was responded to.
> to the delight of the internet users [youtu.be].
Even the repeaters don't seem to help. Are you sure the remote host is up?
> And then I realize that analog wireless communication is so much richer [youtube.com]
Frequency modulation is known to have higher bandwidth.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday July 06 2021, @12:46PM (2 children)
You mistook the protocol, it wasn't ICMP, it was a broadcast UDP.
analog wireless is not bound to AM, where did you see me restricting out FM from analog transmission?
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Tuesday July 06 2021, @02:25PM
Aha, yes - universal dance party!
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Tuesday July 06 2021, @02:26PM
I didn't. I was in agreement, I was explaining why your comment was true.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Barenflimski on Tuesday July 06 2021, @04:04PM (1 child)
In some places today, I'm not sure what other tech would reach there. It's hard to wire up every single island in the Arctic. Its hard to wire up every single village in the world. Many places don't have the power to run a Tx/Rx station for cell signals.
Is it needed? I don't know, not where I'm at. I mean, I got mine right?!
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday July 06 2021, @10:43PM
Because you need internet on every single island in the Arctic?
Or directional microwave antennas don't work in the Arctic?
Or the few geosync satellites that the humanity used until Elon Musk & friends suddenly ceased to work?
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday July 06 2021, @07:21PM (1 child)
Running copper wires everywhere doesn't work well either; they get stolen by copper thieves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 07 2021, @12:09AM
Policeman stolen by thieves. Nice society you have there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 06 2021, @10:47AM (1 child)
>> I've seen firsthand what it can do when you bring internet to parts of the world that have never seen a library.
Better IEDs?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 07 2021, @06:34AM
Hahaha. The Arabs had libraries when Europe was a backward shithole where not even the nobles were likely to be literate.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bradley13 on Tuesday July 06 2021, @06:16AM (20 children)
The solution is actually really simple: Get observatories off this planet. However, with SpaceX turning into a regular bus service, and a bit of modular planning, there is no reason not to launch all the components for a radio telescope into orbit.
Hubble and Webb are poor examples, because they took decades and cost fortunes. They are unicorns, but that's not the only way to do science. Build cheap, redundant components. Ship them up in job lots. Use remote-control to assemble in space.
Stick the result in a Lagrange point, and there won't *be* any interference from Earth-oriented satellites.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by Barenflimski on Tuesday July 06 2021, @06:26AM
A-men.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Opportunist on Tuesday July 06 2021, @06:48AM (5 children)
Erh... do you have a faint idea what it costs to put a sat on a lagrange point? Not to mention that the ones that are "easy" to reach are not really that stable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 06 2021, @07:45AM (2 children)
Probably not a big deal to get to L2.
But that's a red herring. If the premise is that we should move astronomy from ground-based to space-based telescopes, just put them in low earth orbit. They can be put in a higher orbit than Starlink and other constellations.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Wednesday July 07 2021, @07:23AM (1 child)
L2 is fairly easy to reach (staying there is a different matter, but still, yes, one of the more easy to establish Lagrange points) but the communication is kinda complicated, at least if you're looking at the L2 of Earth-Moon.
If you mean L2 for Earth-Sun, I don't think you have even remotely calculated just HOW far away that point would be. Hint: It's about 4-5 times as far away as the moon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 07 2021, @02:06PM
Hint: JWST will orbit the Earth-Sun L2. It is launching on an Ariane 5 ECA, which has less performance than a Falcon Heavy. JWST is not the only telescope that will orbit that point, and it is no trouble at all to send telescopes there.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday July 06 2021, @11:50AM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 06 2021, @08:07PM
Starlink are the ones working with astronomers to deal with things so it doesn't become a problem. OneWeb are the ones being obstinate.
(Score: 3, Informative) by PinkyGigglebrain on Tuesday July 06 2021, @07:10AM (4 children)
there is a huge difference in getting something into LEO, around 2-400 Kilometers up and getting something to a Lagrange point at 1,500,000 km for the closest and least stable.
for context Luna is ~385,000 km away.
And then we have to consider how hard it is to get funding just for Earth bound RTs much less one in orbit.
While I agree with the sentiment that getting the the telescopes, optical and radio, off Earth would be a great thing its not going to happen anytime soon. if ever.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 06 2021, @07:50AM (3 children)
JWST is a 6.5 ton spacecraft that will orbit L2, launching on a measly Ariane 5. It's no trouble at all.
The key is to make space telescopes assembly line style so that they cost $10 million each instead of $10 billion. Then launch them with Starship. Assemble them in orbit to make them bigger. If one fails, you send up another one, or just service it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 06 2021, @04:52PM (2 children)
Large optics doesn't work that way, unless you are talking about radio telescopes.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Tuesday July 06 2021, @08:27PM (1 child)
Actually Optical telescopes can work that way.
You can take a bunch of smaller mirrors, put them together and combine the light [ucla.edu] they gather into a usable form. The VLT [wikipedia.org] in Paranal, Chile uses four 8.3m mirrors to create what is in effect a 16m mirror in terms of it's light gathering ability but the distance between the individual mirrors allows for a very high resolution of distant objects. The more surface area, the more light gathered. The wider the mirror the higher the resolution is.
The issue is that the smaller the wavelength you are observing the tighter the tolerances needed in combining the signal. Optical telescopes gathered light has a very, very short wave length at 400-750 nanometers. Radio telescopes on the other hand gather the 1cm to 10m range and the resulting signals is much easier to combine. Which is how the Square Kilometer Array in the article works.
The issue here isn't a technical one, building a multi element telescope and putting it and the needed infrastructure to support it into orbit or even better the far side of Luna is well within our current technological scope.
The issue is the cost. Astronomy in general is always struggling for funding, the only reason Arecibo was built in the first place was that the primary funding and push to build it came from the US Department of Defense and it was intended for military use. The telescope would probably not have been built with out it. Even with cheap access to orbit the cost of a space based radio telescope array would be so high as to make it a non starter.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 06 2021, @10:05PM
That was the point I was getting at, meaning visible telescopes in space aren't practical. You can't do aperture synthesis in the optical regime without a crapton of supporting infrastructure. Take a look at what they need to phase those mirrors on those telescopes. If you are trying to make a large synthetic mirror, you need to hold all of your surfaces in the shape of that virtual mirror, which means you need to hold all of those part to the nanometer level. Take your middle of the road visible wavelength, 500 nanometers, if you want diffraction-limited performance, that is (rule-of-thumbly) lambda/14. So you need to hold your surfaces to, say, 10 nm. If you follow your engineering rules of thumb, you need to be able to adjust it at the nanometer level, and to measure it at the 0.1 nanometer level. The telescopes like VLT that do it now (or will soon) have nice large mirrors that are nice and very thick by themselves, so they hold their shape fine, then it is a matter of phasing a handful of them up (boy, I make it sound so easy!). If you go with a thin flexible mirror, you need a whole bunch of actuators behind it to change its shape, as well as a metrology system to constantly be measuring its shape. By the time you add all of that infrastructure, you might as well just use a big old mirror. You don't gain anything doing that in space, but on the ground you can give up all of that extra mass and power you need to make it work (which is why there are some VERY large ground telescopes being proposed).
There is one other advantage that the RF people have, besides a much larger wavelength (and thus much larger tolerance in positioning things), is that they can time-tag their data. If you put an atomic clock at each small telescope, you just record its signal and time-tag it. You don't have all those other real-time metrology issues discussed above, and you can take your data after the fact and phase it up any way you want, because all of your data are in sync by virtue of the atomic clocks. You can't do that in the visible (or even IR), so you have to actually phase up your telescopes before you take your data. Doing this in space sounds promising, but the problem is you need to know the position of your telescopes to the precision of your phasing tolerance. They don't move on the ground, and they wouldn't move on the Moon, but if they are on individual spacecraft, you'd need to know their instantaneous x-y-z positions to that tolerance level, and that is not an easy problem either.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday July 06 2021, @08:01AM (7 children)
Square Kilometre Array is somewhat massive. This is an array of hundreds of dishes, each 10s of metres across. The dishes "sum" the signal using interferometry, so the baseline is important (hence two continents) - it strongly affects resolution. The area is important - it strongly affects minimum brightness of target objects.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 06 2021, @10:42AM (4 children)
When Starship is operational, put the array in similar orbit like Jupiter. That should give you a nice baseline. And since there is no more air, you can use thinner reflectors for the antennas and have the reflectors be much larger. A similar idea is described here,
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.2015.0119 [royalsocietypublishing.org]
https://eventhorizontelescope.org/building-larger-array [eventhorizontelescope.org]
So, imagine a telescope array with 1000 of these dishes orbiting the sun at Jupiter distance (distance where solar panels still are effective). Baseline is now 10AU or 1.5e9km - that's 100,000 better resolution. Your resolution from the table above is well under 1 nanoarcsecond and more in the femtoarcsecond area. Basically, that resolution you can read an open book on Mars from Earth.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday July 06 2021, @11:21AM (3 children)
Great, totally awesome. Will Starlink et al pay to put 1000 payloads into orbit at Jupiter distance?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 06 2021, @11:41AM (2 children)
Maybe, but what would compel them to pay for that? Guilt? Starlink's orbits have been approved by the FCC. They require approval for changes to the constellation and have been fighting competitors like Dish Network and OneWeb every step of the way. Finally, they have been working with the astronomy community to reduce the impact to telescopes.
Starlink will be followed by OneWeb, Amazon, China, and others. Will they pay for their share of the "damage"?
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday July 06 2021, @12:26PM (1 child)
I'm just pointing out that "just build a space telescope", which some propose, doesn't work. So either write off radio astronomy or find some other mitigation.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 06 2021, @08:35PM
Starlink's mitigations are their sunshade to protect optical astronomy and going radio silent when close to radio telescopes. Optical astronomers would like them to do better and are working with them to find solutions. The radio astronomers think geofencing should be enough and are working with them to figure out the details.
OneWeb are actually a bigger problem on both counts and they have been obstinate about it. The FCC had to make working with the NRAO a requirement of their US broadcast licence to even get them to talk about it. AFAIK they haven't done any optical mitigation despite their satellites being larger and brighter than first gen Starlinks.
Amazon Kuiper and whatever the Chinese system is called haven't launched anything yet so we don't know what impact they will have. Amazon requires permission from the FCC to launch so that sets a minimum level of cooperation for them, and they might be cooperative, but the PRC is unlikely to care assuming their birds ever fly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 06 2021, @11:33AM (1 child)
For radio astronomy, we will see dishes on the far side of the Moon eventually. It will be expensive but there are neat ideas about using a crater [nasa.gov]. The observations can be combined with Earth-based radio telescopes and radio space telescopes further away from Earth.
(Score: 3, Touché) by PiMuNu on Tuesday July 06 2021, @12:23PM
> The observations can be combined with Earth-based radio telescopes and ...
Well, apparently not :)
(Score: 3, Touché) by PinkyGigglebrain on Tuesday July 06 2021, @07:19AM (3 children)
This adds more credence to the theory that Elon Musk is an Alien or one of the Lizardmen that live in the hollow Earth and secretly control Humanity..
What better way to prevent the improving sensitivity of Human's radio telescopes from detecting signs of intelligent life on other worlds than creating so much interference that any real alien signal would be easily discredited, if it wasn't discarded right from the start as interference form the satellite constellations in the first place?
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 06 2021, @10:45AM (2 children)
The problem is you can't 'hear' earth signals even from closest stars because we are just so dim with respect to distances. So what do you think will allow us to hear aliens? Especially in plain EM like we try but mostly already made obsolete. But like Snowden says, conspiracies tend to be alive because reality is too difficult to handle. You would have thought that religions proved that already, but sometimes people can't see the forest for the trees.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 06 2021, @12:04PM
Space telescopes are going to become larger and more numerous. Those will be used to search for megastructures or exoplanet biosignatures within about 100 light years. A targeted radio search can be made on any promising candidates, using much better radio telescopes than we have today.
If no evidence of life is found within that bubble, the search will expand outward. But we'll already be able to tell that life is exceedingly rare or fleeting if we rule out most objects within that distance.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Tuesday July 06 2021, @08:44PM
For a time the Earth was putting out as much radio energy as a small star (most stars are actually very faint in the radio spectrum) and it would have been/be easy to detect Earth if anyone out there has a sensitive enough receiver pointed at Earth when that energy reaches them.
Thanks to improvements in the sensitivity of receivers and other changes in how we use radio frequencies now the Earth is a fairly dim radio signal and might be lost to all but the most sensitive of radio telescopes on distant worlds.
Projects like the SKA allow for a large amount of radio energy to be gathered from distant sources for a much lower cost than a single large dish. The bigger the array the more sensitive and higher resolution it is.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 06 2021, @06:10PM
No doubt that is a problem
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DccmKKnizFY [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 06 2021, @06:38PM
"the needs of the many ..."
i guess they just have to move ... maybe to the moon? anywho, they're looking at stuff that took like millions of years to reach us, so they can wait another 10-50 years until the moon base (and canteen) is up, no problem.
i guess doing (serious?) astronomy on earth today makes as much sense as taking global temperature samples in asphalt and concrete cities?