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Comments: 196 +-   Planck Telescope Is Coolest Spacecraft Ever on Saturday July 04 2009, @04:39PM

Posted by timothy on Saturday July 04 2009, @04:39PM
from the that's-certainly-what-the-moon-rabbits-think dept.
space
science
Hugh Pickens writes "Launched in May, BBC reports that Europe's Planck observatory has reached its operating temperature, a staggering minus 273.05C — just a tenth of a degree above what scientists term "absolute zero." and although laboratory set-ups have got closer to absolute zero than Planck, researchers say it is unlikely there is anywhere in space currently that is colder than their astronomical satellite. This frigidity should ensure the bolometers will be at their most sensitive as they look for variations in the temperature of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) that are about a million times smaller than one degree — comparable to measuring from Earth the heat produced by a rabbit sitting on the Moon. Planck has been sent to an observation position around the second Lagrange point of the Sun-Earth system, L2, some 1.5 million km from Earth and Planck will help provide answers to one of the most important sets of questions asked in modern science — how did the Universe begin, how did it evolve to the state we observe today, and how will it continue to evolve in the future. Planck's objectives include mapping of Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropies with improved sensitivity and angular resolution, determination of the Hubble constant, testing inflationary models of the early Universe, and measuring amplitude of structures in Cosmic Microwave Background. 'We will be probing regimes that have never been studied before where the physics is very, very uncertain,' says Planck investigator Professor George Efstathiou from Cambridge University. 'It's possible we could find a signature from before the Big Bang; or it's possible we could find the signature of another Universe and then we'd have experimental evidence that we are part of a multi-verse.'"
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Submission: Plank Telescope is Coolest Spacecraft Ever by pickens (49171)
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  • Don't think so. (Score:4, Funny)

    by nebaz (453974) on Saturday July 04 2009, @04:47PM (#28582795)

    They call that a cool space craft? It doesn't even have warp drive, let alone quantum torpedoes. It doesn't even have anything onboard to which you could apply the phase "reverse the polarity". Cool. Bah!

    • It might actually have one or more peltier devices, which could definitely merit the phrase "reverse the polarity".(though, given the needs of the experiment, I suspect that reversing the polarity would be a terrible plan...)

    • They call that a cool space craft? It doesn't even have warp drive, let alone quantum torpedoes. It doesn't even have anything onboard to which you could apply the phase "reverse the polarity". Cool. Bah!

      Dude, you can reverse the polarity on anything with a DC circuit. Sometimes, with spectacular results.

      • In other news, the coldest telescope became the hottest telescope upon the discovery of two coincidental mistakes where all analog switch were labeled backwards and the purchased fuses closed on failure.
    • Hmm... If you reverse the polarity of the bolometers, you might be able to CAUSE galactic background noise rather than measuring it! This would disturb the subspace plextrons the borg craft uses for propulsion, causing it to self destruct!

      • Re:Don't think so. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Artifakt (700173) on Saturday July 04 2009, @07:07PM (#28583403)

        Neat idea, taken a little farther. An advanced civilization prevents a more primitive one from developing advanced physics by making astrophysical observations look funny locally. The primitives assume the weak anthropic principle holds, come up with all these really strange theories about cosmic strings, dark energy and such, and never become competition.

  • That's a pretty small telescope you have there, and it doesn't last very long either ; ).

  • Planck telescope (Score:5, Funny)

    by Bromskloss (750445) on Saturday July 04 2009, @05:03PM (#28582855)

    The Planck telescope is the smallest telescope that, according to our current understanding of nature, it is meaningful to speak about. This property sets the Planck telescope apart as the natural unit (also called Planck unit) for telescopes.

    • The Planck telescope is the smallest telescope that, according to our current understanding of nature, it is meaningful to speak about. This property sets the Planck telescope apart as the natural unit (also called Planck unit) for telescopes.

      I think the technical term is telescope quantization. Telescopes can only exist as integer multiples of the Planck telescope.

  • Worst metaphor ever? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mellon (7048) on Saturday July 04 2009, @05:07PM (#28582871) Homepage

    A rabbit sitting on the moon will be at a much different temperature than its surroundings, not a millionth of a degree kelvin. The only thing interesting about measuring the temperature of a rabbit on the moon is resolution, not sensitivity. So essentially completely the opposite of what the Planck telescope does.

    Sorry, just had to release my inner pedant - this was too good to resist.

    • A rabbit sitting on the moon will be at a much different temperature than its surroundings

      Not for very long. How's that for pedantry?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      heat != temperature.

      The summary said "heat produced by a rabbit sitting on the Moon". Somehow that went through your brain and came out as "measuring the temperature of a rabbit on the moon". So the problem is you, not the metaphor.

    • Re:Worst metaphor ever? (Score:4, Funny)

      by Ambiguous Coward (205751) on Saturday July 04 2009, @05:18PM (#28582937) Homepage

      The only thing interesting about measuring the temperature of a rabbit on the moon is resolution

      Well yeah, that and the obvious question of "what the hell is a rabbit doing on the moon, and how did it get there?"

      • Maybe its measuring the temperature of a human on earth?

      • obviously it is suffering an agonizing demise since it doesn't have a pressure suit, O2 supply, or thermal protection.

      • Well yeah, that and the obvious question of "what the hell is a rabbit doing on the moon, and how did it get there?"

        Obviously it should've taken that left turn at Albuquerque =)

  • Really, it doesn't have a reason to go on the moon.... if they would give the mouse for example, i'm sure that little critter would love to be on the moon much more than a rabbit, so that it can eat all the cheeze there is there!

  • NPOV (Score:4, Insightful)

    by michaelmalak (91262) <malak@acm.org> on Saturday July 04 2009, @05:16PM (#28582925) Homepage

    just a tenth of a degree above what scientists term "absolute zero."

    This is where the so-called "neutral point of view" ceases to be useful.

    • I scratched my head over this, too.

      Why is "absolute zero" in quotes? And what do "people" who aren't "scientists" call "0" on the "temperature scale" that "scientists" term "Kelvin"?

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by michaelmalak (91262)
        The idea of absolute morality is so forbidden in mainstream media that anytime anyone uses the word "absolute", it has to be portrayed in a relativistc sense. So in this case, scientists believe in some sort of "absolute zero", but that doesn't mean everyone does, and thus the myth that there are no absolutes is preserved.

      • I think it was a wikipedia meets special relativity pun. Since there can be no absolute reference frame, how can there be an "absolute zero". Maybe, somewhere outside our 4 dimensional reference, an object we think is at complete rest is vibrating and contains energy. Then you match that with Wiki's intended neutral point of view . . .

        And if it wasn't a really horrible pun, then maybe the GP was trolling

      • summary reads like it was meant for CNN.com not slashdot.org. I am certain that nobody with a slashdot account would be both ignorant of what absolute zero is and incapable of JFGI

    • I'm not sure that's even the worst infelicity of the summary. The start, "Launched in May, BBC" establishes that BBC (perhaps "the BBC") was launched in May.

  • Planck hath a blog and a twitter! (Score:4, Informative)

    by davecl (233127) on Sunday July 05 2009, @03:13AM (#28585093)

    For more information you can catch up with Planck on the mission blog [wordpress.com] on Planck's twitter [twitter.com], and on the Planck outreach [cf.ac.uk] website.

    I help maintain the blog and work on both the Planck and Herschel [wordpress.com] missions.

  • Stupid units (Score:4, Informative)

    by the_other_chewey (1119125) on Sunday July 05 2009, @07:47AM (#28585887)
    Just to clarify: -273.05C equals 0.1 Kelvin. That looks much more impressive, as it
    indicates how close to absolute zero it is - and even is easier to grasp in my opinion.
    Come on, we're on Slashdot, dammit!

    • Re:rabit from the moon (Score:5, Funny)

      by Valdrax (32670) on Saturday July 04 2009, @04:58PM (#28582837)

      I just want to know how long the rabbit's been sitting there. I mean, is it still a living rabbit, and does it get hotter for a few seconds as it thrashes around without breath in the moon's almost nonexistent atmosphere?

      Or do scientists just know how hot SPACE RABBITS get? When will the invasion come?

      • Space rabbits are a minimal threat. The space vixens keep their population in check.

      • Re:rabit from the moon (Score:5, Informative)

        by RyanFenton (230700) on Saturday July 04 2009, @05:10PM (#28582885)

        According to Japanese and Aztek folklore [wikipedia.org], a rabbit has been there for a long time. I could never really make out the face or the rabbit in the moon's craters when I look.

        Ryan Fenton

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Ann Coulter (614889)

          MUAD'DIB: the adapted kangaroo mouse of Arrakis, a creature associated in the Fremen earth-spirit mythology with a design visible on the planet's second moon. This creature is admired by Fremen for its ability to survive in the open desert. [1]

          [1] Herbert, Frank. Dune. 1965.

    • Re:rabit from the moon (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 04 2009, @05:32PM (#28583005)

      I'm just disappointed they couldn't find a way to turn it into a car analogy instead of rabbits.

    • comparable to measuring from Earth the heat produced by a rabbit sitting on the Moon

      Is anyone else dissapointed we don't already have this capability?

      I'm actually a little disappointed that this wasn't expressed in standard metric terms. I thought here on Slashdot, the agreed upon standard was something in terms of libraries of congress. Is there a conversion factor or something we can apply here?

      • 20 rabbits = 5 hares

      • Re:rabit from the moon (Score:4, Informative)

        by tylerni7 (944579) on Sunday July 05 2009, @12:26AM (#28584611)
        Well, let's say 1 Library of Congress is about 20TB, a measure of information. If we want to convert that into Rabbits * arc length, a unit of temperature * arc seconds, we can use the laws of entropy.

        We know that entropy=k*ln(O) where k is the Boltzmann constant and O is the number of microstates of the system. If we really wanted, we could express the number of microstates as 1 LoC, since both are really just measuring information in one way or another.

        Now if you recall temperature = change in heat/change in entropy. The average body temperature of a rabbit is about 312 degrees kelvin according to google.

        To get a change in entropy and heat, we can look at both over an arbitrary time step t, so 312 K [one rabbit]=(heat/t)/(k*ln(2TB [one Library of Congress])/t)

        Solving for one Library of Congress, we get one Library of Congress = e^(k*heat [in joules]/312 degrees K)=e^(4.4252x10^-26 joules^2/(degree kelvin)^2)

        Now assuming a rabbit is about 0.2 meters in diameter, at a distance of about 384,000 km, that's about 3*10^-8 degrees.

        So, putting that all together, the conversion factor is about e^(4.4252x10^-26 joules^2/(degree kelvin)^2)*1.1*10^5 arc seconds.

        Hope that clears things up for you!

    • Re:rabit from the moon (Score:5, Insightful)

      by thrawn_aj (1073100) on Saturday July 04 2009, @09:34PM (#28584017)

      comparable to measuring from Earth the heat produced by a rabbit sitting on the Moon

      Is anyone else dissapointed we don't already have this capability? I can stream Top Gear in HD from youtube in faster than real time but we lag this far behind in (optical? thermal?) imaging? I know the atmosphere creates a lot of optical distortion... but really? Not even a rabbit (which have unusually high body temps if I recall correctly)?

      Actually, that's an interesting question. It has been answered in this thread but I'd like to address a deeper issue here. Technical challenges usually come in two flavors, one which can be solved simply by making a device better and better and the other, which has to do with the signal you're trying to measure just not being there (or is otherwise masked by "noise"). I put "noise" in quotes because people always assume the signal can be separated from the noise. Not so. In most cases, you have to know the source of the noise to reliably subtract it out. In other cases, you can be lucky and the noise will be random so that greater averaging of the data filters out the noise automatically. For ALL other cases, people have to resort to making assumptions about the noise, which means that the "filtered signal" you end up with has (sometimes huge) contributions from the person who made the assumption. Is it a rabbit or an artifact of my assumptions?

      This particular question you raise is in that final category. There just isn't enough signal there that is distinguishable from the surrounding crap for you to tell with any certainty that you have rabbits on the moon and not a migratory bird flock here in the sky. You could always throw money at the problem (in principle) by having a dozen weather satellites constantly monitoring the patch of atmosphere in direct line of sight between you and the moon and feeding you detailed real-time data of temperature, pressure, index of refraction, chemical composition of air(/dust) in there (affects absorption/reflection/transmission). THEN, you MIGHT stand a good chance of catching a glimpse of your elusive rabbit.

      Technology can always be improved. Ambient conditions will always be the ultimate threshold for the actual utility of that technology.

      That is not to say that a particular phenomenon always stays of out of reach. One simply realizes that certain constraints stated in the problem are actually ridiculous. For instance, if the goal was really to observe rabbits on the moon, the constraint that the instrument be on the earth is highly artificial. Instead, one would relax that constraint, put a satellite above the atmosphere, satisfy one's rabbit fetish and the problem's solved :).

    • People just don't read Gertrude Stein any more.

      rj

    • "Why is it so hard for people to understand that there is no "before the big bang"? Time was created at the big bang."

      That's certainly an interesting hypothesis. In what way do you propose we test it out?

        • The big bang is not a definition. It, and the details of what got created how/when and what happened shortly after and whether it's meaningful to talk about "before" are all hypotheses and theories, not definitions.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by fatski (1137813)
      Unless our universe exists within something larger, with its own time. If there were universes prior to this one in that larger space then there would have been something before the big bang, regardless of our universes local time. You might not think so, but really, nobody knows.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by khchung (462899)

        For your statement to make sense, you assumed the same property "time" exists within and outside the universe, and that it made sense to connect the two. It is like saying since Earth existed within something larger, there might be something due North of Earth's North Pole.

        Unfortunately, North/South is a local property of Earth, while there is plenty space above the North Pole, you cannot go more north from the North Pole. Similarly, spacetime is a property of our observable universe, and that property br

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by V50 (248015) *

      Why is it so hard for people to understand that there is no "before the big bang"? Time was created at the big bang. There is no "before time began". Before time, there is no before. A bit like there was no spelling bee champion 65 million years ago. Maybe very little like that. Or maybe a bit like asking what is west of the moon. Hmmm... ok, very little like that, too. How about like asking at what date 13 became a prime number? Yes, more like that. You get the gist. Time is part of our universe. The big bang created the universe, space and time together.
      If there was no big bang, then maybe there was something before whatever was then. But if there was a big bang, there was nothing before that.

      So basically what you're saying is that in the beginning, there was nothing, which exploded.

      And you wonder why people have a hard time grasping current big bang theory. :-)

    • Because it is unintuitive and because our language is limited. You yourself just wrote:

      Before time, there is no before

      Our language relates to the universe we live in so all we have is words like "before" whether we are talking about time or a causally related chain of states. For us they are the same thing.

      You may be right about time as we know it not existing until the big bang (and I say "may" on purpose, your statement was rather definitive for something that is really on the edge of our theory and

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by jmv (93421)

      I'm pretty sure what happened before the big bang is similar to what will happen after eternity.

    • A simpler analogy would be to try to go north from the North Pole.

      • Why not? I can learn so much if I do.

        "One may say that time had a beginning at the big bang, in the sense that earlier times simply would not be defined."
        [Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam, 1988), pp. 8-9.]

        Obviously, taken out of context.

        But, in this "hammer time" (I never heard that phrase), which direction would an egg break to little pieces? Which direction would entropy increase? Is there an answer to this, otherwise, I have a hard time telling what is before, and what is after.

      • They're probably mean hammer time, the time that our time is embedded in.

        Stop. Hammer time?

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