Sky Eyes
Technology is nothing short of amazing. For the longest time the most amazing telescope in the world was the 200 inch Hale Telescope on Mount Palomar, in California. It taxed the technological infrastructure of the time to the max. It took, from start to finish, 21 years to make and revolutionized the astronomical world after the second world war. The mirror alone took 13 years to grind and polish and when it finally began operation in 1948 this telescope saw further into the universe than any instrument ever had.
Today we are riding the technology cusp at breakneck speed and astronomical innovations are again pushing the night sky envelope. A new generation of computer driven, multiple mirrored super scopes are on the drawing board. The largest, dubbed the overwhelmingly large (OWL) telescope has a series of mirrors that give it an effective diameter of 100 metres, a light gathering ability that is greater than all the major telescopes now in use combined! It has 4,000 times the area of the Hale telescope!
The new OWL, if and when it is constructed, will be able to peer right to the edges of our universe, see individual planets orbiting stars and cost more than a billion dollars to make. And it is so sensitive that it cannot be used without the most sophisticated software ever devised to cancel out the Earth’s atmosphere. Its foundations and the machinery that move it have to be impervious to the tiniest vibrations. Even a footstep would be enough to send out vibrations that could distort an image.
It will be the largest moveable piece of hardware ever created and is on the theoretical reaches of the materials used. Even if we wanted to build something larger, the limits to existing materials would prohibit the exercise. And it will take 20 years, from start to finish to build. But when it is completed it will create images that will revolutionize astronomy and what we know and understand of the universe. And no matter how we try, its virtually impossible to think of a way to pervert its use into something military or have an application other than to see, understand and learn.
January 11th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
I hope when this telescope is constructed,space travel won’t be far behind so when we find a planet fit for human habitation,those of us who feel this world is not going to make it,due to nothing more than a lack of common sense,can relocate there and start over,using the lessons we have learned destroying this one.One can only hope that this won’t be neccesary,we will see that we can do better with this planet,and use our new ‘leaps and bounds’ in technology to make the technology we already use cleaner and cheaper so all can take advantage of it.It should’nt take a mind-bending breakthrough or catastrophic event to show us we are going in the wrong direction.I wonder if scientists released a report that an asteroid was hurling toward us and would reach us in 10 years and there was a50/50 chance it would strike us unless we did started to do something about it now,if attitudes would be the same as it seems to be about climate change?The bright light in all of this (to me)seems to be the younger generation who are growing up in this technological world and see the price that will have to be paid if nothing is done.I hope they are smarter, or at least,use more common sense than was used before them.
January 16th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
Jack…
I don’t mean to be too in your face, but I’m not sure I agree with this. Anyhow, thanks for sharing and I think I’ll write a post on this on my blog soon….
January 25th, 2008 at 6:36 am
Hi Richard,
This isn’t related to your blog posting, but I didn’t see an email for you or anything on the site.
The question is concerning Winter Tires. You had mentioned it on the radio. My father law and I got talking about winter tires. I drive a front wheel drive with all seasons in the back and swap out the front for good snow tires in the winter. He said “You may as well have 4 all seasons on there because you have more traction in the front then the back, and that is dangerious”. He also said that rear wheel drives you simply need to swap out the front tires, but with front wheel drive you have to swap out all four.
Is this True?
Can you explain why? I would think that in a front wheel drive, it’s the front pulling you that you need the traction on to steel. I can understand that putting on the winter tires in the back would help a little, but I figure it wouldn’t be significant enough to give a HUGE improvement over all seasons.
If you can’t talk about this on the radio, perhaps you could just hit me back with an email to the one above or John.Burke@aliant.ca please?
Thanks.