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Months after its July fly-by, New Horizons is still squeezing its images down pipe measured in bits-per-second – and that's a problem space boffins would like to solve in the future.
As we know from NASA's successful LADEE test, lasers are a viable and truly broadband space comms medium – but firing a laser from (say) Mars and receiving it on Earth would need a Bloody Big Telescope.
That's what boffins from Japan and Madrid reckon the world will have, once the proposed Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is built, so in this ArXiv paper, they propose using that instrument for deep-space optical communications.
The CTA is going to have dozens of instruments of varying size (from 6m up to 24m) in both hemispheres, a requirement for deep space communications, and as Alberto Carrasco-Casado (National Institute of Information and Communications Technology in Tokyo) and collaborators José Manuel Sánchez-Pena and Ricardo Vergaz (University of Madrid) note, the instruments should be good enough to do double-service as communications receivers.
That's because handfuls of photons are exactly what the CTA receivers are designed to detect – the tiny flashes of light that cosmic rays and gamma rays produce when they collide with the upper atmosphere.
Note: "Boffin" == "Egghead" == Scientist.
[See DSN Now (Deep Space Network - Now) to follow which satellites NASA is currently communicating with. -Ed.]
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday December 04 2015, @02:07AM
Note: "Boffin" == "Egghead" == Scientist.
This is Rebel Propaganda! Boffins are SPIES!
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 04 2015, @06:48AM
many boffins died to bring us this information
(Score: 2) by mrchew1982 on Friday December 04 2015, @07:08AM
Ok, hand over your geek cards...
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Bothan [wikia.com]
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday December 04 2015, @07:23AM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 04 2015, @02:43AM
Egghead
Who's an egghead?! Eggface!
(Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Friday December 04 2015, @03:13AM
Next, I suppose, our submitters will give a dissertation on the meaning of "bollocks".
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Friday December 04 2015, @03:47AM
Next, I suppose, our submitters will give a dissertation on the meaning of "bollocks".
Never mind the bollocks, here come The Sex Pistols [youtube.com]!
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday December 04 2015, @12:32PM
Coming from cattle country myself I always did wonder why Britons run around yelling "Steer!"
On the same subject, "bloody" is what you become after you faceplant while riding BMX. "Sod" is a rectangle of turf you lay down to make a lawn, ergo "sod off" means "take the lawn up again?" "Bugger" is what you say when you refrain from calling someone a "booger." "You git" means, "Get out of here."
With regular curse words Britons fail badly. They do shine with re-purposing words of praise, as in the captain who observed our performance on the rugby pitch and pronounced it, "lovely."
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 04 2015, @03:31AM
/pinkyfingertochin
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday December 04 2015, @04:20PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 3, Funny) by frojack on Friday December 04 2015, @06:16AM
Seems to me we should be seeking to develop wide band massively parallel entanglement. Lots faster than lasers.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.