European Observatory NOEMA Reaches Full Capacity With Twelve Antennas (phys.org) 18
The NOEMA radio telescope, located on the Plateau de Bure in the French Alps, is now equipped with twelve antennas, making it the most powerful radio telescope of its kind in the northern hemisphere. Phys.Org reports: Eight years after the inauguration of the first NOEMA antenna in 2014, the large-scale European project is now complete. Thanks to its twelve 15-meter antennas, which can be moved back and forth on a specially developed rail system up to a distance of 1.7 kilometers long, NOEMA is a unique instrument for astronomical research. The telescope is equipped with highly sensitive receiving systems that operate close at the quantum limit. During observations, the observatory's twelve antennas act as a single telescope -- a technique called interferometry. After all the antennas have been pointed towards one and the same region of space, the signals they receive are combined with the help of a supercomputer. Their detailed resolution then corresponds to that of a huge telescope whose diameter is equal to the distance between the outermost antennas.
The respective arrangement of the antennas can extend over distances from a few hundred meters to 1.7 kilometers. The network thus functions like a camera with a variable lens. The further apart the antennas are, the more powerful is the zoom: the maximum spatial resolution of NOEMA is so high that it would be able to detect a mobile phone at a distance of over 500 kilometers. NOEMA is one of the few radio observatories worldwide that can simultaneously detect and measure a large number of signatures -- i.e., "fingerprints" of molecules and atoms. Thanks to these so-called multi-line observations, combined with high sensitivity, NOEMA is a unique instrument for investigating the complexity of cold matter in interstellar space as well as the building blocks of the university. With NOEMA, over 5,000 researchers from all over the world study the composition and dynamics of galaxies as well as the birth and death of stars, comets in our solar system or the environment of black holes. The observatory captures light from cosmic objects that has traveled to Earth for more than 13 billion years. NOEMA has "observed the most distant known galaxy, which formed shortly after the Big Bang," notes the report. It also "measured the temperature of the cosmic background radiation at a very early stage of the universe, a scientific first that should make it possible to trace the effects of dark energy driving the universe apart."
The respective arrangement of the antennas can extend over distances from a few hundred meters to 1.7 kilometers. The network thus functions like a camera with a variable lens. The further apart the antennas are, the more powerful is the zoom: the maximum spatial resolution of NOEMA is so high that it would be able to detect a mobile phone at a distance of over 500 kilometers. NOEMA is one of the few radio observatories worldwide that can simultaneously detect and measure a large number of signatures -- i.e., "fingerprints" of molecules and atoms. Thanks to these so-called multi-line observations, combined with high sensitivity, NOEMA is a unique instrument for investigating the complexity of cold matter in interstellar space as well as the building blocks of the university. With NOEMA, over 5,000 researchers from all over the world study the composition and dynamics of galaxies as well as the birth and death of stars, comets in our solar system or the environment of black holes. The observatory captures light from cosmic objects that has traveled to Earth for more than 13 billion years. NOEMA has "observed the most distant known galaxy, which formed shortly after the Big Bang," notes the report. It also "measured the temperature of the cosmic background radiation at a very early stage of the universe, a scientific first that should make it possible to trace the effects of dark energy driving the universe apart."
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Well, to some degree you're right in general, but investing in sensor tech isn't one of the things dragging us down right now. If you follow the money it's cellphone ringtones have gone too far.
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people have been calling doom for centuries it never happened
It's been happening. The mass extinction is well underway. You're simply willfully ignoring it.
even global warming wont kill us all
So to be clear, as long as a handful of us make it, that's OK with you?
there are parts of the world fue to proximity to large inland bodies of water wont feel the effects to harshly
That's literally not how anything works.
the people in those areas who have the capabilities to fee themselves and loved ones will get threw just fine.
You do realize that global food production is already suffering, right?
the Majority of us might be in big trouble sometime in the future but the species will be fine.
If the species survives but society does not then we will have failed, and all our works will fall to rust.
Re:Is Big Science Really Worthwhile Anymore? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ya, imagine those knucklehead scientists inventing lasers in the 50's with the Cold War threatening nuclear annihilation. What WERE they thinking? And that work on quantum theory during the Great Depression, another Scientific Wankfest if there ever was one.
Hint: scientific achievement rarely remains cloistered in the area that fostered it. Now back to the Dark Ages for you to await The Enlightenment.
Re:Is Big Science Really Worthwhile Anymore? (Score:4, Insightful)
Economics isn't the problem. Politics is. If funding for these kind of science experiments is 1% of the US annual military budget, then it's one of the most expensive projects in science :P
That should tell you enough.
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The economic system is designed with political goals in mind, so each informs the other, and the two are self-perpetuating themselves and everything else into a big hole... If you refuse to participate you just make yourself irrelevant, which is the real genius of the whole evil scheme.
Re: Is Big Science Really Worthwhile Anymore? (Score:5, Insightful)
"self-serving, corrupt and a way to just get tenure and a big grant and then sit back and enjoy"
If you think that's how most tenured professors behave in the sciences, then you've never actually worked with them. A "big grant" lasts a few years at most, and funding agencies want results or you don't get funded again. It's a constant hustle for results, then writing more proposals to get more funding to support more research, and to support the graduate students who rely on you.
The challenge with major world problems (I'm thinking of climate change specifically) isn't that more scientists are needed right now, it's that more politicians need to believe and be guided by science.
Twelve is almost enough (Score:2)
Add a couple more antennas and it'll make an even better home WiFi router [amazon.com].
Twelve!!! (Score:2)
In layman's terms that is the same as two wifi routers laid end to end
How does that rail system work? (Score:3)
I'm curious how that works in the snow. Are there heaters to melt it or does somebody have to go clear it before they want to move them?
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I am not sure what you mean by that but you cannot use computers to do optical interferometry because it is technically impossible to record optical wavelengths the way we do with radio ones. So optical interferometry must be done physically with mirrors placed at a distance precise up to a half wavelength. Very hard to do. Done by the Keck and VLTI telescopes.
There are projects to do this in space. They are called hypertelescopes. I would love to see one but it is not for tomorrow.
VLA in New Mexico (Score:5, Informative)