Can Next Generation Telescopes See More than Just a Dime in San Francisco?

[Loren Booda]

What novel objects do you anticipate we will observe among the very first galaxies? Among the first stars?

 

[turbo]

Hard to tell. We have to be really careful to factor in selection effects. In the Hubble deep field shots, for instance, we have to be cognizant of the fact that we are looking at outliers - the brightest and most energetic objects at their redshifts. We can't see low surface-brightness galaxies, dwarf galaxies, globular clusters, etc, so it is unwise to make generalizations based on the active galaxies that we *can* see.

 

[Loren Booda]

Thanks, turbo.

Might averaging over wider space (like the COBE multipoles of cosmic background radiation), or exposing images over longer times (like the optical Ultra Deep Field) - but by exploring other frequencies transparent to intervening space - improve discovery of unprecedented low energy entities in deep space?

 

[turbo]

Improved infrared sensors and larger orbiting telescopes can help. When objects are so far away that their emissions are red-shifted hard toward the IR bands we can't pretend that we can collect their light in conventional visible bands and make generalizations based on what we see in our local universe. When we image the hottest, brightest objects at extreme redshifts, it is irresponsible to compare their qualities to the the qualities of bodies in our neighborhood. It is tempting to fit observations into our generally-accepted cosmological model, and say things like "We observe an evolution in XYZ with redshift" when in fact selection effects can drown any such analysis.

SDSS has assembled an all-sky survey of the northern hemisphere and the team found a lot of new quasars. Despite conventional expectations, the team has found no evolution in absolute nor relative metallicities with redshift, nor are high-redshift quasars preferentially lensed, despite the increased column depth assumed by their redshifts.

 

[Oldfart]

Hard to say...

But I think that the most attractive target will be the planets of other stars. Imagine the excitement when we fist see smokestacks, roads, airports!

 

[Loren Booda]

Perhaps we are looking for the wrong messenger so far. What a pleasant surprise if we will be able to signal with gravitation (which enables tunneling), quantum mechanics (a la Bell-type experiments) or a combination of both.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

They say that if the Hubble telescope was in Los Angeles, you could see a dime in San Francisco. I figure with the next generation you probably could see a dollar or perhaps a dollar and a half.

 

[FtlIsAwesome]

They say that if the Hubble telescope was in Los Angeles, you could see a dime in San Francisco. I figure with the next generation you probably could see a dollar or perhaps a dollar and a half.