The Camera That Changed the Universe 76
StartsWithABang writes As the Hubble Space Telescope gets set to celebrate the 25th anniversary of opening its eyes to the Universe, it's important to realize that the first four years of operations were kind of a disaster. It wasn't until they corrected the flawed primary mirror and installed an upgraded camera — the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) — that the Universe truly came into focus. From 1993 to 2009, this workhorse camera literally changed our view of the Universe, and we're pushing even past those limits today.
Like Schrodinger's cat (Score:3, Funny)
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So, who do you think you are?
I haven't looked at it yet. So the options are still open.
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It was the press coverage that was the disaster (Score:4, Insightful)
Despite the slight change in the curvature of the main mirror, Hubble's images were pretty amazing. It was the press and the politicians that called it a disaster. Fortunately, that didn't prevent NASA from sending a crew to install corrective optics and a better camera.
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Conservatives - whether you like them or not - have been opposed to increasing Federal power (as opposed to the States). This doesn't mean that people, such as myself, who are opposed to Imperial Washington are Conservative. But to say that Obama is Conservative is ridiculous.
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You keep using that word 'socialism'. I don't think it means what you think it means.
Re:It was the press coverage that was the disaster (Score:5, Informative)
Cannot fathom why your post id marked redundant, OT maybe, but redundant?
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Be careful how you use the terms "precision" and "accuracy," because they have very specific meanings [google.com] to engineers and metrologists. Yes, the precision was mind-boggling. The accuracy, on the other hand, well...
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Amazing maybe, but far below what was promised. There isn't any way to gloss over the fact that the project managed to screw up the single most important component in the telescope. The mirror ended flawed and in orbit not because it was too technically challenging, but because of arrogance, sloppiness, and poor oversight. The taxpayers have a right - even today - to be pretty steamed about it.
Imagine i
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Not to mention good old politics in the bid-award process. A certain other corporation based in a certain town in upstate NY had build plenty of telescopes, same size, for orbit-based use, but because Security dammit!! and some cronyism on the side Hughes Optical got the contract. And screwed it up in an attempt to save cost.
Discovery (Score:5, Insightful)
The Hubble Space Telescope made us realize that space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.
Re:Discovery (Score:4, Informative)
An attribution to Douglas Adams would be good ;)
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StartsWithABang is writing a summary. Where then are they plagiarizing? It's assumed they're paraphrasing the article(s).
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Yeah, it's big
One of many (Score:5, Insightful)
It is a little sad that while at least seventeen of these giant telescopes have been launched by the US alone, only one has ever looked up.
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Re:One of many service vehicles (Score:1)
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It turns out that in this day and age 2-3 m class telescopes aren't that expensive compared to launching and running the things. They also really really want to get the James Webb Space Telescope up there before spending money anything else.
Re:One of many (Score:4, Informative)
NASA does not have the funds to build instruments, or to run them once they have been launched. One of the telescopes is being used for the WFIRST mission (http://wfirst.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/). The other is waiting for money.
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Besides, if you have one, why not just keep the other two mothballed for back up.
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This is ridiculous.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I get the quantum mechanics principle, the mere act of observing changes the observed, that you can't measure the momentum or the position without affecting the other. But, just put a telescope in the orbit and it changed the universe? ... come on guys, there should be some limits even on hyperbole.
I change the universe all the time. Of course, most of it will never be affected by those changes, but changes they are.
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Actually, everything was fine until you made an observation about the observation.
The universe is doomed now.
What have you done????
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Changed the Universe? (Score:2, Interesting)
The camera only changed the universe if we are in a simulation with lazy evaluation (things are extrapolated and created to be as they should exist when we look at them) or or if something like quantum superposition applies on a macro-level (the observed matter's state is changed based on our observation of it).
The camera didn't change the universe, it changed the *known* universe--made us a little less ignorant. For millenia mankind expanded its knowledge of places by travelling to them. That has now bec
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I read it. It's pretty, exploratory, well worth a read.
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You are complaining about the headline, but didn't even read the summary?
For fuck's sake, please just tell your ISP that you are too stupid to afford their services.
Headlines are atrocious here, and summaries slightly less so. But the summary does not suck as much donkey cock as your reply does. I hope you are a hermaphrodite, because you really need to go fuck yourself.
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> The camera only changed the universe if we are in a simulation with lazy evaluation
Pendantic much?
News for Nerds. Nerds like editing stuff.
Re:I thought the 'lazy evaluation' was clever (Score:1)
I see most replies are critical that you didn't read the original article. (Maybe they don't get the 'lazy evaluation' part if they've never dabbled in functional programming.) Maybe they don't know about the actually rather serious philosophical speculations that our universe may be a simulation. Anyway, I for one thought it was clever.
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Maybe they don't get the 'lazy evaluation' part if they've never dabbled in functional programming
"Lazy evaluation" is an optimization technique for evaluating Boolean expressions, I've never heard of a programming language that doesn't use it by default
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Thanks for the posting that.
Sadly, Dogma is just as much present in Scientists as it is with Priests.
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Sadly, Dogma is just as much present in Scientists as it is with Priests.
That's really sad. Not the implication of your statement, but that you might believe it in the slightest.
In an attempt to head off further comments in this subthread: you might as well be Hitler.
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Gee, why did Feynman call it "Cargo Cult Science"
Or Max Planck say "Science advances one funeral at a time."
I'm not delusional about:
"You can take the People out of Politics,
But you can't take the Politics out of People"
But then you if had read "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" you wouldn't have this fallacy that the progress of science is linear.
The only thing missing (Score:1)
http://hubblesite.org/gallery/... [hubblesite.org]
Great book of the story behind the repair mission (Score:5, Informative)
A photographer was given broad access across all of NASA years before the mission launched to fix the Hubble, and he put together an book of amazing photos and stories behind the mission:
Infinie Worlds by Michael Soluri [amazon.com]. They have a hardcover and a Kindle version, not sure how the pictures would come out in the Kindle version but the hardcover is pretty large and the photos look great.
P.S. Do Not Buy Kindle version.. (Score:1)
After I posted, read the only negative review of the book - it was from someone who had bought the Kindle version, which apparently was horribly with many formatting errors and text being cut off/overlaid by images...
God's Expressive Influence (Score:2)
My all-time favorite Hubble pic: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap03... [nasa.gov]
Dear Hubble, (Score:1)
are u sure? (Score:1)