A Radio Telescope for the Far Side of the Moon

What and where is the dark side of the moon? | HowStuffWorks

I am told that physicists, astronomers, and cosmologists dream about is the placement of a radio telescope on the far side of the moon.

Putting it on the dark side would of course ensure that the planet earth would not be in its way. What is more important, the moon has no atmosphere, so the clarity of radio 'view' the human race would get of distant parts of the cosmos would be ... well, to use a technical phrase, an ass-kicking thrill.

And though a radio telescope would be all that, ambitious scientists have additional related ideas. For example, there is a proposal to put a gravitational wave interferometer in the moon.

Obvious question ... a whaaaaat?

Interferometry is a set of techniques by which waves are made to interfere with one another, creating patterns that convey information.

Usually this sort of measurement involves electromagnetic waves. But the study of gravitational waves is a new thing. The first direct observation of gravity waves was recorded in 2016. Observing them from earth is a tricky matter. The earth is very busy, and one could end up thinking one had detected such a wave from deep space, only to be deflated by the discovery that it was a consequence of earth's own seismic activity.

The moon is much less seismically active than the earth, and much less 'busy' in all respects. So the gravitation wave interferometer should go there, and -- well, we'll learn stuff.

This has me thinking. When we as a species first walked on the moon we were only 60 years away from our first fumbling successes at heavier-than-air flight. Now, another 60 years on are we ready for another such step?

Comments

A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a majesti

Five Lessons from the Allegory of the Cave

Please correct me if there are others. But it seems to be there are five lessons the reader is meant to draw from the story about the cave. First, Plato is working to devalue what we would call empiricism. He is saying that keeping track of the shadows on the cave wall, trying to make sense of what you see there, will NOT get you to wisdom. Second, Plato is contending that reality comes in levels. The shadows on the wall are illusions. The solid objects being passed around behind my back are more real than their shadows are. BUT … the world outside the the cave is more real than that — and the sun by which that world is illuminated is the top of the hierarchy. So there isn’t a binary choice of real/unreal. There are levels. Third, he equates realness with knowability. I only have opinions about the shadows. Could I turn around, I could have at least the glimmerings of knowledge. Could I get outside the cave, I would really Know. Fourth, the parable assigns a task to philosophers

Searle: The Chinese Room

John Searle has become the object of accusations of improper conduct. These accusations even have some people in the world of academic philosophy saying that instructors in that world should try to avoid teaching Searle's views. That is an odd contention, and has given rise to heated exchanges in certain corners of the blogosphere. At Leiter Reports, I encountered a comment from someone describing himself as "grad student drop out." GSDO said: " This is a side question (and not at all an attempt to answer the question BL posed): How important is John Searle's work? Are people still working on speech act theory or is that just another dead end in the history of 20th century philosophy? My impression is that his reputation is somewhat inflated from all of his speaking engagements and NYRoB reviews. The Chinese room argument is a classic, but is there much more to his work than that?" I took it upon myself to answer that on LR. But here I'll tak

Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Search This Blog