[Interview+] This Crazy Pizza Slice Shaped Telescope Obliterates JWST Resolution

So many questions! For what reason was the 33 light year distance selected to arrive at the minimum 21 meter size of the telescope? If the distance was cut to 16.5 light years would the size of the telescope needed be 10.5 meters? Though debatable, some say there are 33 discovered exoplanets within 15 light years of Earth and 106 exoplanets out to 33 light years distance. Another question I have is why would an even number of mirror segments be better than an odd number? Does Dr. Newberg really think we might ever in our lifetimes be able to send a probe to an exoplanet that is parsecs away from Earth? The trip there and the return signal to Earth would take thousands of years at the speed of 700,000 km/hr of the Parker Solar Probe. This is just .064% of the speed of light! It would seem that would need to send a nano sized probe accelerated to some great percentage of the speed of light to reach an exoplanet and return information to Earth. The nano probe idea seems to me to be the only viable currently proposed solution, but of course we would need to first have the data about the target exoplanet and this telescope idea may just be the ticket for us to gather such information.

Do the two or more telescopes on an interferometer have to be the same size? Or could you have one big telescope that does most of the light collection and a smaller one just to get the resolution? Could you even on a 30m telescope just have a 20m boom sticking out the side with a piece of mirror that's effectively part of the primary mirror and could even reflect onto the same secondary mirror that the first goes to? Does that make a 50m telescope? Does normal interferometry only give resolution on one axis too?

Very interesting 🧐 she seems so wonderful to.

Awesome!!! Dr Heidi Jo thank you. I wish I could be in your classroom. You think outside the box while standing inside. Going back to rewatch past interview. Thank you Fraser as always. :)

Great interview. Generally, your interviews are the thing I like the most, amongst a great collection of things you do.

So there's really nothing new under the sun (pardon the astronomical reference). Look at US Patent 5243351, Full Aperture Image Synthesis Using Rotating Strip Aperture Image Measurements (1993, Rafanaelli, Rehfield) for a patent on the image processing of a large, spinning rectangular aperture to form a full, synthetic aperture image. Rafanelli and Rehberg describe the characteristics of a space-based imaging system and the image processing required to achieve high resolution in all angles, not just one. Their approach is ideal for astronomy but the structural design for such a large, diffraction limited telescope would be VERY expensive.

Hey Fraser. If Sag A* suddenly went QUASAR, it would presumably shoot its jets out of its north and south poles (which aren't aimed at our solar system). Could this still affect us on earth? Or would we just get one hell of a light show? And if so, what would it look like?

Another excellent interview, thank you for sharing.

Oh, yes. Your videos and the data is like catnip to me!

Am I getting this right, is the heat shield on the triangle portion?

If they're doing a 1x21m telescope and planning to spin it, one could place the right ballast so that is center of balance was centered on that first 1m panel. This would let it intererometer with itself for 41m resolution. Or just make it half the size for more convenient launching