We have some incredibly powerful telescopes that have given us amazing views of the universe and allowed us to look back into the early days of the universe. These observatories, such as James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), are amazing engineering feats that required billions of dollars and decades of work.
But what if we could get a better telescope that already exists? It wouldn’t be a conventional telescope. It wouldn’t even come with an eyepiece. But it would be the most powerful telescope we’ve ever built.
This telescope will be used sun itself.
To give you an idea of how powerful a solar telescope is, consider the James Webb Space Telescope. With a mirror measuring 21.3 feet (6.5 meters) in diameter, the James Webb Space Telescope can achieve a resolution of about one-tenth of an arcsecond, about 600 times greater than that of the human eye. At that resolution, the telescope can see the details on a coin placed 25 miles (40 kilometers) away or the pattern of a regular soccer ball placed 342 miles (550 kilometers) away.
Related to: 12 Discoveries From the James Webb Space Telescope That Changed Our Understanding of the Universe
Another example is Event Horizon Telescopewhich is actually a network of individual instruments spread around the world. By carefully coordinating its elements, the telescope has given us Great pictures From the surrounding gas discs Giant black holesTo do this, it was able to achieve an astonishing resolution of 20 microarcseconds. At this resolution, the telescope could see an orange sitting on the planet’s surface. moon.
But what if we wanted to get to a bigger telescope? A bigger telescope would require giant dishes or networks of antennas flying through the atmosphere. Solar SystemBoth of which require huge leaps in our technological capabilities.
Fortunately, there is a giant telescope already available, located at the center of the solar system: the Sun.
Although the Sun may not look like a traditional lens or mirror, it does have a lot of mass. Einstein‘s theory general RelativityMassive objects bend in space-time Around them. Any light that hits the surface of the Sun is bent, and instead of continuing in a straight line, it heads toward a focal point, along with all the other light that hits the Sun at the same time.
Astronomers already use this effect, called Gravitational lensTo study further Galaxies in universeWhen the light from these galaxies passes near a giant cluster of galaxies, the mass of that cluster magnifies and enlarges the background image, allowing us to see much farther than we normally can.
The “solar gravitational lens” results in almost unbelievable high resolution. It’s like a telescopic mirror the full width of the sun. An instrument placed at the right focal point will be able to harness the gravitational distortion of the sun’s disk. attractiveness Allowing us to observe the distant universe with an astonishing resolution of 10^-10 arc seconds. That’s about a million times more powerful than the Event Horizon Telescope.
Of course, there are challenges in using the solar gravitational lens as a natural telescope. The focal point of all this light bending is 542 times larger than the main focal point. distance between earth and sun.It’s 11 times. distance to plutoAnd three times the distance traveled by humanity’s most distant spacecraft, Voyager 1which was launched in 1977.
So not only will we have to send a spacecraft further than ever before, it will have to have enough fuel to stay there and move. The images taken by the solar gravitational lens will spread over tens of kilometers of atmosphere. spaceSo, the spacecraft would have to scan the entire field to build a complete mosaic.
Plans to take advantage of the solar lens date back to the 1970s. More recently, astronomers have proposed developing a fleet of small, lightweight satellites that would deploy solar sails to accelerate them to 542 AU. Once there, they would slow down, coordinate their maneuvers, build an image and send the data back to Earth for processing.
As far-fetched as this concept may sound, it’s not far from reality. What would we get out of this kind of supertelescope? If it were aimed at the nearest known exoplanet, for example, it would offer a resolution of up to one kilometer. And considering that plans for the James Webb successor aim to achieve exoplanet-imaging capabilities where the entire planet fits into a handful of pixels, the solar gravitational lens puts these ideas to shame; it’s capable of providing a stunning image of the detailed surface features of any exoplanet within 100 light-years, not to mention all the other astronomical observations it could achieve.
To say that this telescope will be better than any known telescope is an understatement. It will be better than any telescope we might build in any possible future for the next few hundred years. And the telescope already exists – all we have to do is get the camera in the right position.
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