10-05-2018, 05:30 AM
the days when astronomers were real astronomers!
Yes, bunch of young whippersnappers these days peering up at the sky, and on their screens. Next thing you know, virtual astronomers will just sit in their holodecks all night, AND all day looking at simulations!
We had some discussion on Punaweb in the past about adaptive optics, as it's used by the military and in astronomy. Neil DeGrasse Tyson in a recent interview discussed how the military uses adaptive optics, then the manner in which it was incorporated into modern astronomy. It's not a military weapon as some have stated, but a defensive measure for tracking incoming missiles. It's best to read (or listen to) the entire section of his interview about adaptive optics, but in part:
TYSON: And - if there's a dot of light high up in the atmosphere, it could be the afterburner of a missile headed our way. The light - ... passes through many layers of air, layers that are not all at the same temperature, layers that are not all stable... And by the time that bit of light makes it through, the position of the thing in the sky does not precisely correspond with where you think it is from where the light came from.
The military wants to hit its target and doesn't want to miss, so they invented something called adaptive optics, and it is a way of tracking what the air is doing and then compensating for it at your telescope that's doing the measuring. It completely undoes the thing that made it bend and wiggle and jiggle so that when you aim for your target, you hit it. We didn't know anything about this in astrophysics until one day at an astrophysics conference, someone who is related to that study and that - those discoveries gave a paper on it. And we said, yeah, we're taking it, OK? And it had finally become declassified.
https://www.npr.org/2018/09/17/648693243...ce-and-war
Yes, bunch of young whippersnappers these days peering up at the sky, and on their screens. Next thing you know, virtual astronomers will just sit in their holodecks all night, AND all day looking at simulations!
We had some discussion on Punaweb in the past about adaptive optics, as it's used by the military and in astronomy. Neil DeGrasse Tyson in a recent interview discussed how the military uses adaptive optics, then the manner in which it was incorporated into modern astronomy. It's not a military weapon as some have stated, but a defensive measure for tracking incoming missiles. It's best to read (or listen to) the entire section of his interview about adaptive optics, but in part:
TYSON: And - if there's a dot of light high up in the atmosphere, it could be the afterburner of a missile headed our way. The light - ... passes through many layers of air, layers that are not all at the same temperature, layers that are not all stable... And by the time that bit of light makes it through, the position of the thing in the sky does not precisely correspond with where you think it is from where the light came from.
The military wants to hit its target and doesn't want to miss, so they invented something called adaptive optics, and it is a way of tracking what the air is doing and then compensating for it at your telescope that's doing the measuring. It completely undoes the thing that made it bend and wiggle and jiggle so that when you aim for your target, you hit it. We didn't know anything about this in astrophysics until one day at an astrophysics conference, someone who is related to that study and that - those discoveries gave a paper on it. And we said, yeah, we're taking it, OK? And it had finally become declassified.
https://www.npr.org/2018/09/17/648693243...ce-and-war
"I'm at that stage in life where I stay out of discussions. Even if you say 1+1=5, you're right - have fun." - Keanu Reeves