{"id":14963,"date":"2018-03-26T08:44:58","date_gmt":"2018-03-26T13:44:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=14963"},"modified":"2018-03-26T08:44:58","modified_gmt":"2018-03-26T13:44:58","slug":"which-optician-will-supply-this-lens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2018\/03\/26\/which-optician-will-supply-this-lens\/","title":{"rendered":"Which Optician Will Supply This Lens?"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Out There<\/strong><\/em>, Corey S. Powell describes<\/a> one of those cosmological phenomenon that makes my jaw drop:<\/p>\n

One of the most intriguing destinations out toward the Oort Cloud is not an object but a conceptual location, the \u201csolar gravity lens\u201d point. Bear with me for a second, because this one is weird but truly wondrous.<\/p>\n

The gravitational field of the Sun subtly warps the space around it, following the rules of Einstein\u2019s general theory of relativity. At a great distance from the Sun, the warped light rays come together, just like the focal point of a magnifying lens. If you are standing at that point and you look back at the Sun, you see a greatly magnified version of whatever is on the other side\u2013again, just like a magnifying lens.<\/p>\n

A new\u00a0study\u00a0funded by NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) demonstrates the astonishing sights available to a space telescope placed at the solar gravity lens point. So far, astronomers have observed only a handful of planets directly, and these are seen merely as unresolved dots; most are detected only indirectly. But using the Sun\u2019s magnifying power, a properly sited space telescope could scan the surface of an Earthlike planet 100 light years away at a resolution of about 1 kilometer!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wow! Here’s a diagram from the academic report<\/a> from which Powell is working:<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a>

Figure 8. Imaging of an exo-Earth with solar gravitational lens. The exo-Earth occupies (1km\u00d71km) area at the image plane. Using a 1m telescope as a single pixel .detector provides a 1000 \u00d7 1000 pixel image<\/p><\/div><\/blockquote>\n

Notice the telescope will be staring at, or near, the Sun. Fascinating stuff!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Out There, Corey S. Powell describes one of those cosmological phenomenon that makes my jaw drop: One of the most intriguing destinations out toward the Oort Cloud is not an object but a conceptual location, the \u201csolar gravity lens\u201d point. Bear with me for a second, because this one \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14963"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14965,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14963\/revisions\/14965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}