Monday, March 16, 2015

How to Pick Up Messages After They're Gone


Today, astronomers read the history of the universe by looking at the light emitted by hot, distance objects. Sometimes, however, those light sources give out - and their light disappears. Good news: A new technique might be able to still read the information that had been carried in that long-gone light.
DIEDRE HUNTER (LOWELL OBS.) ET AL., HST, NASA

3 comments:

Owen said...

I think that it is interesting that astronomers are developing technology that can see information that has already gone passed us. The energy that they are detecting is like the trail of a comet, except in this case, it is the "echoes" of light that they are detecting. Another analogy is that it is like a DVR, where the message is recorded, but can only be accessed by this new technology. If they can detect information from the echo, I wonder how far back that the original message goes in time. By the way, even thought this article was really short, it was complicated and hard to keep straight.

Paisley said...

Speed of light travel can not always be equal for everything space-related, including the discussion in this article. First off, astronomers found a way to find the tail end of what is like an echo-comet, and the astronomers can detect echoes of light from it. Later, the article discusses how that sound might be re-heard, in the same way as the photons in iPhones, radios, TVs, and other modern devices record the sound and play it. Also, they used the radiation that is found in the vacuum of space to play what is heard. Finally, the astronomers on the job describe just how difficult it would be to hear this recorded sound. They predict that the only way to hear the message is to use a speaker that has multiple atoms that produce energy! This article was really interesting in how it talked about just how difficult it would be to listen to a message from long, long ago.

Maxwell said...

It is interesting how they are making a tranmission machine for space yet. If here is really nothing ou there to look at too much it would seem as a waste of time and a waste of money. Though I think this is a weird plan but could make space exploration move towards the future. Yet I agree with owen this artical was really weird to take notes off of and fix into a paragaph.