Damn greedheads. And me.

March 2, 2006 3:15 PM

Ground-based telescopes "worthless" by 2050.
posted by trinarian (7 comments total)

I love that scientists are planning something called the "Extremely Large Telescope"
posted by Robot Johnny at 3:17 PM on March 2, 2006

You don't say.
posted by billysumday at 3:19 PM on March 2, 2006

Living in Florida, I watch singular contrails cover large swaths in the sky and stay for hours. How much has this been linked to "greenhousing"? Second... one would think the military or someone has some technology that reduces or removes contrails, right? Seems like a far more reversible problem than CO2 emissions.
posted by trinarian at 3:20 PM on March 2, 2006

You don't say.
posted by ND¢ at 3:22 PM on March 2, 2006

The atmosphere is a pain in the ass to get through as is. Atmospheric distortion (some of the light from the sun diffuses in the atmosphere and never reaches Earth, etc.), and the fact that many infrared and ultraviolet emissions cannot penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere, are both reasons why space-based telescopes are superior. Still, R.I.P. the environment, that's the big loss here.
posted by banished at 3:26 PM on March 2, 2006

"You either give up your cheap trips to Majorca, or you give up astronomy. You can't do both."

Talk about overly dramatic. Astronomy will go on. Still, it is a pain in their ass, there is a lot of money invested with ground based telescopes. They should have seen this coming though, they've already been having light pollution problems for years, as there are not many places left on Earth dark enough to build these ground telescopes.
posted by banished at 3:30 PM on March 2, 2006

But I can still use my telescope to spy on the hot neighbor down my block, right?
posted by fenriq at 3:30 PM on March 2, 2006