Next Gen Planet Hunter. The LIFE Telescope

[@shockslice7632]

Fraser's interviews are themselves interferometry - Fraser's expertise + interviewee's expertise increases our resolution of the topic.

[@andreaslusti4018]

Interviewferometry?

[@MrAluntus]

This is really a fantastic idea and goal. We should be thinking about a telescope that is scalable so we can start with 4 companions and ultimately upgrade to a larger footprint

[@seditt5146]

YES! Lets do it! I have been dying for a spaced based Interferometer ever since I heard about the technology for Radio waves when I was a kid. I didnt fully understand all the logistics of it when I was younger, so I became resentful for a bit that the Scientific community was not pushing harder for a visible interferometer in space.

[@00dfm00]

Congrats on the 400k subscriber milestone!

[@njm3211]

What a fascinating time to be entering the field of exoplanetary exploration.

[@Mr.Anders0n_]

I'd rather wait for the FTL drive 😛

[@17leprichaun]

Great talk!!! thank you both!

[@cavetroll666]

Very cool topic thanks

[@zapfanzapfan]

Ah, a sort of resurrection of Terrestrial Planet Finder, that would be good! Happy 400k!

[@burgzaza]

Awesome interview!

[@mecha-sheep7674]

Fraser Cain + Interferometry = awesome.

[@garyswift9347]

Very enjoyable, thank you.

[@SirLothian]

Fraser, not on this topic, but one for your next Q&A. I am watching Dr. Becky talk about Dark Matter vs MOND. My question about MOND is do they actually have an active theory on why these adjustments to gravity happen, or are they just modifying the equations with no idea of the actual physics that would cause the changes?

[@pasozytspoleczny]

I love the comparison to Colognes Kathedral! Love and respect for both of you from Köln!

[@omnijack]

Humble request for discussions of space exploration games with scientists

[@ladydustin7811]

Concerning the formation flying : The European space agency will launch the Proba 3 mission next year. This is a Technology Demonstrating mission precisely to proove formation flying in space. This in preparation for LISA were formation flying will also be important.

[@TheDeej26]

Go Stellaris!

[@TriuraniumOctoxide]

OK Fraser - PLEASE do a Space PC game special! I'd imagine a fair percentage of your audience also play them :)

[@ohgodimdead]

Yep one here *raises hand*

[@GaryBickford]

I've been, in my own naive way, advocating for interferometry based exoplanet finding and viewing for some time. I'm thrilled to see this first exercise! If this succeeds, I could see a larger version of this with a virtual aperture of kilometers and a collecting power from dozens of mirrors, making a telescope that could see continent-style or smaller actual features.

[@talkingmudcrab718]

Definitely the nicest guy in the Angerhausen Clan. Great interview as always Frasier.

[@DMGrass-gb9kg]

Clan?! Cringe

[@adirmugrabi]

Any chance you'd tell us which space exploration games you play?

[@Zurround]

What depresses the hell out of me is that even if evidence of life is found there will be no realistic way to send astronauts to explore because it will be many light years distance and even if we have strong reason to suspect intelligent life that even if we send them a radio signal they will be 150 light years away and at best we can hope for a response 300 years later. No way in hell are we getting a "galactic community" like Star Trek or Babylon 5.

[@Mr.Anders0n_]

Yes, the sad reality of living in a tantalizing universe where it'll always be beyond our reach 😔

[@AndersWelander]

This type of science requires even more patience than developing a fusion reactor.

[@trignals]

Very cool stuff! 10hrs imaging (2.5 a day ~= 1000 a year or 50 years to catch them all... So maybe we could fill out the spectrum with seperate missions to catch them all and charachrterise the best in every wavelength?

[@physixtential]

I was reading Daniel's title and realized how many astrophyscists are going to instantly and proudly change their title all the way over to astrobiologist as soon as we have good evidence of life and people will take them seriously. I wonder, if we do discover very clear life, if anyone will be left to work on other problems in astrophysics. I love astrophysics, but I personally think it will be hard to focus on it when I know there is life out there... I suppose it will drastically increase our motivation to improve space travel capabilities :)

[@nataliealice05]

Life doesn't mean intelligent life or civilisations.

[@NunoPereira.]

When Starship will be a reliable transportation system, it will be much easier to put bigger telescopes and spaceships out there, thus the rate of new discoveries will increase hopefully!

[@unvergebeneid]

Bold title. Deep cut, too.

[@douginorlando6260]

I would go for a linear interferometer with maximum physical connected baseline. Besides the ability to null a star to see reflected starlight from a planet or dust cloud, it could measure orbits of double stars around other galaxies. This would provide a direct geometric measurement of the distance to the galaxy (knowing the distance between the two stars orbiting each other allows this calculation).

[@anassawallha9213]

I liked the interview v much BTW Dr Angerhausen looks like a German officer in the Kaiser Army in WW I

[@4Nanook]

Getting a craft to remain in a position to within a fraction of a wavelength of light seems like a prohibitively difficult task.

[@lifespacemission]

Fortunately the space crafts do not need to be formation flying with a precision in the order of the wavelength. There are ways to use optical solutions (e.g. delay lines) to correct for smaller difference. Still the formation flying needs to be very precise.

[@denijane89]

I really wish we could extend our lives enough to be able not only to plan these great projects, but also to see them launched and the first results. I know I've said it before, but it's so sad to plan cool missions like this and know that it will extend after you retire or worst. Of course, one could think of it also as a great legacy, but yeah...The Life project sounds awesome, really. I didn't catch it, but what orbit are they planning for the telescopes? Because 4 telescopes + 1 spacecraft to gather the light sounds very complicate orbit-wise.

[@airplayn]

I still remember the night Neal Armstrong stepped onto the moon. I was 12 years old and my father started crying. When I asked why he explained that he was sad because he knew he'd never live to see the results of this first step in the conquest of space. The day I saw a Space-X booster do a successful suicide burn I cried in sympathy. All I could do was think about how pleased and excited he would have been to see one of those "Buck Roger's" movie serial tropes actually come true. Perhaps the creator of this stimulation we're in will read this and taking pity on us, rewrite just few lines of code just a tad. With our luck he will trigger some ancient legacy code called "windows" and it will all crash in a blue screen of death. lol

[@denijane89]

@@airplayn I guess I'd cry also if I could watch the Falcons come back. Or Starship completes its first orbit. Too bad I'm so far from the US. But yeah, I totally agree. Though I'm not sure that the creator of the simulation would want to modify it, probably they'll let it run to whatever nonsense we get ourselves into :)

[@BongoFerno]

A higher resolution telescope, needs a larger sensor, or a denser sensor, to detect the higher resolution?

[@rJaune]

Great interview! I wonder how long the propellant would last on a mission that needs 5 telescopes to move this much. Also, I wonder if reflectors can be added/removed easily. There are literally a lot of moving parts, and I wouldn't one one of the 5 parts to ruin the mission.

[@lifespacemission]

Thanks for your question. See the answer from out team in our latest comment.

[@bruceleenstra6181]

Question: If a star-forming nebula can also create lots of rogue planets wouldn't even more of them form along with globular clusters? And then get tossed about by all those stars. Or are we talking about different generations of stars?

[@jammin8300]

QQQ????? Off subject slightly, would a group of Israels iron beam missile defence system, be able to drive a starshot solar sale to distances needed to be viable for successful mission????? Thanks

[@MrAluntus]

Did you say Wolf 359 as in Star Trek Wolf 359? I didn't know that was really a named place?

[@EinsteinsHair]

I remember this question from my dialup days 30 years ago. As I recall it is a red dwarf star 8 LY away that is listed in a catalog by an astronomer named Wolf. Got to give credit to Next Generation's science advisors.

[@4Nanook]

Stars aren't monochromic light sources, and if you did filter light down to one frequency you couldn't do any spectroscopy on the planet.

[@sulljoh1]

Bonding over Stellaris? 😂

[@timg6125]

Can you tell us about space exploration games that are fun?

[@frasercain]

I've been sharing one each week in the questions show. I've talked about Rimworld, Stellaris, and No Man's Sky so far.

[@lifespacemission]

@@frasercain As for the LIFE telescope team I can inofficially confirm that games like Elite Dangerous, Rimworld, No Man's Sky, Outer Wilds, Stellaris, Master of Orion etc. are played. Does Oxygen not included count as space exploration? ;)

[@Garian9]

Fraser, what's your current and all time favorite 4X space game(s)?

[@soaringstars314]

Hey fraiser. Objectively speaking, Pluto is a planet by the IAUs definition and if pluto isnt a planet, then by their logic most, if not all other planets shouldn't be planets either Pluto has cleared its orbit from other significant objects and by plenty too as Neptune cannot come closer than a few astronomical units from pluto given enough time yet earth has 3 planets that are less than 1AU from earth If were gonns talk about the kuiper belt small objects itself then we have to talk about the Trojan asteroids, near earth asteroids, etc. Mercury is smaller than some moons so size doesn't matter. Pluto is more geologically active than some other rocky planets and has plenty of moons. We even sent a probe to it There is no good reason why Pluto shouldn't be a planet at all as there will always be inconsistencies if they attempt so. More importantly what Wil happen if "planet 9" is found? Will it not be a planet despite its massive size because its in the kuiper belt? whichever they choose will not be the right choice because they have dug themselves in a mess especially as we find more objects that are bigger than mercury Why add complexity to the criteria if its going to create inconsistentcies and instead stick with the first 2 definitions? The third definition is barbaric and wrong as thats the reason they demoted ceres due to their lack of knowledge of asteroids going around other planets too? Objectively speaking why shouldn't Pluto be a planet?

[@johnbennett1465]

All the descriptions of interferometry assume a unified wave front hitting both telescopes. Each photon is only detected by one telescope. The sources are not lasers, so different photons are not in phase. So how can this work? Something important is being left out of the descriptions.

[@lifespacemission]

Thanks for your question. See the answer from out team in our latest comment.

[@XYOdin]

to me, to you

[@Em.P14]

Is it just me or is that concept of them "flying in formation" in an orbit going to fall appart as soon as something as irrelevant as "time" enters the chat ? I'm not even a novice at orbital mechanics yet but aren't they imidietly gonna start drifting appart due to everyone beeing on different orbits and therefore mooving at different speeds to keep the altitude without having to put up insane ammounts of course corrections? Starlink like ammount would be needed too, an insane correction algorythm for the taken immages or...

[@lifespacemission]

Thanks for your question. See the answer from out team in our latest comment.

[@stevenutter3614]

Lol. Anger hausen? Does he know a joyhausen, or a lovehausen?

[@SedatKPunkt]

*COOL DUDE…* *VIEL ERFOLG, DANIEL* *…GRÜSSE AUS ISTANBUL aka CONSTANTINOPLE…_*

[@jssomewhere6740]

When you say directly image ,do you mean DRIECTLY image. I don't mean seeing lizard man walking around but I do mean actual colors true heat signatures. Being able to actually see the diameter of the planet. Sorry carried away.

[@doncarlodivargas5497]

If I understand correctly the wavelength are about 100 meters, so we will not see any aliens I think, not even lizard men

[@trignals]

I think its what you are thinking except the planet image is a single pixel. So a planet sized lizard man woud look about the same if he had a methane atmosphere.

[@jssomewhere6740]

@@doncarlodivargas5497 two people replied. I do appreciate that. Both of you said well you won't see aliens or something close. I did say in my comment I don't think we'll see lizard men. Sorry it seems that everything I put into one of these comment threads doesn't get actually read or something. I was curious about the simple. Will we be able to make out true colors better.will we be able to measure the diameter of the planet will we see any heat signatures ( like a volcano going off. Allowing us to infere things like active geology ect... I don't mean to be ungrateful. I specifically said in the comment I don't think we'll see lizard men walking around. All in the effort to not sound like I was stupid and not be slapped in the face with well we won't be able to see blah, blah. Sorry I'm just a bit jaded today yesterday I wrote a saying my grandmother used to say to me when I was young and two Jack a Had things to say that made me wish we were all at the bar. Cuz Today well my bad you were trying to be nice and answer my question thank you.

[@trignals]

@@jssomewhere6740 hey, i guess my answer wasn't as clear as I thought. Btw its definately more of a lighthearted response (and a nerdy fart joke). If the image is one pixel the colours will all be averaged out. So earth would just be light blue, lighter If there was more cloud. There wouldn't be a difference if that averaged colour really was the colour everwhere, close to the colour everwhere or only the average of wildly different colours. The diameter as a dimension and details (like continents) wouldn't register. This is just based on my understanding of other similar content. Would be a fun conversation in a bar. Its not always that simple to figure how to pitch (or catch) interesting questions in a crowd of strangers with a short comment.

[@trignals]

Ah and its in infrared so not a colour of light we can see with our eyes.

[@ElohimYellow]

An y'all are going tobe really disappointed. 😅

[@Poske_Ygo]

Feedback: 1. Transitions still suck.. I am sorry but you only have 1 transition between fking segments and it fking hurts my eyes 2. We cant see the names due to timeline or the timeline description due to names.. Maybe put names on the top The editing of the video is like 5/10 best case scenario. I cant stand it.