Telescopes keep growing– and more pricey. However what if there were a much better method?

One astronomer has actually recommended a possible work-around: Turn the whole Earth into a telescope lens by utilizing the world’s environment to flex and focus light.

When light from stars strikes Earth’s environment, the light bends, or refracts. That flexing focuses the rays, focusing them in an area of area on the opposite side of the world. Put a spacecraft in the ideal area– state, orbiting 1.5 million kilometers from Earth– and it might capture the concentrated rays, states David Kipping of Columbia University ( SN: 10/14/17, p. 22). Instruments aboard the craft may be able to gather more light from dim things than is possible by present telescopes in the world. That indicates the terrascope, as Kipping calls his style, might possibly make ultrasensitive measurements, for instance, exposing brand-new functions of exoplanets, such as range of mountains or clouds, he states.

Kipping has described the concept in a research study accepted in Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific However some researchers are questioning its benefits. Astrophysicist Slava Turyshev of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, Calif., recommends that the principle is infeasible for a range of factors, from the problem of shutting out undesirable light from Earth to the possible blurring of images triggered by light going into the environment at various heights.

Others are a bit more positive. “There’s plainly a great deal of work to do prior to we’ll understand if it will work,” states Martin Elvis of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “Even if this cool concept does not work out, this is the sort of creativity that will get astronomy out of the direct thinking trap of desiring a larger variation of what we currently have.”