Mission to the Gravitational Focus of the Sun: A Critical Analysis · HackerPapers discussions

Mission to the Gravitational Focus of the Sun: A Critical Analysis — mentioned by skykooler

Tue, 22 Oct 2024 06:20:24 GMT

Yes, you'd need to get quite far from the Sun to use it as a lens - about 650 AU is where it starts becoming practical. It would also not be re-orientable, so any "telescope" launched to that location would only be able to observe a single target. (But, notably, it is far easier to send a probe to a far point in our own solar system than it is to send it to another star entirely.) There's a paper that goes into much more detail at https://arxiv.org/pdf/1604.06351 So why not use interferometry instead? Well, it has some significant drawbacks. For example: the Event Horizon Telescope used radio…

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Mission to the Gravitational Focus of the Sun: A Critical Analysis — mentioned by shagie

Wed, 14 Aug 2024 04:36:24 GMT

https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2020/12/10/developing-focal-... (and its critical analysis) https://arxiv.org/pdf/1604.06351 I believe that work on such a project would be interesting, even if it isn't ever done. It is something that if you worked on it as a grad student, and then became a professor and your grad students worked on it ... and they became professors and their grad students worked on it - they'd be the ones seeing the results. Not so much a "this is a way to do things..." but rather a "thinking about research that spans generations and the problems that they solve in the…

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Mission to the Gravitational Focus of the Sun: A Critical Analysis — mentioned by shagie

Thu, 20 Apr 2023 16:01:31 GMT

If you're interested in a critical review of FOCAL (which is also rather interesting) - https://arxiv.org/pdf/1604.06351.pdf I am on the "this is a really hard problem - but an interesting one" category. It seems like it will take a number of significant improvements on top of current technology - but it seems like it would be doable in another few decades if we continue to improve (the difference between Pioneer and New Horizons is 35 years... if we can do that much improvement again we might have something). It is still something that if you are a grad student working on it now, it would…

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Mission to the Gravitational Focus of the Sun: A Critical Analysis — mentioned by aruggirello

Mon, 15 Jul 2019 07:08:41 GMT

So if this probe is bound to venture into the distance range useful for a solar gravitational lensing telescope, why not use it to deploy one? That would really be a major breakthrough IMHO. https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.06351 "The minimum distance for a solar lensing telescope is 547 astronomical units (AU). And in reality, proper positioning would likely require the telescope to be placed even farther out — perhaps as far as 2,000 AU or more."

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Mission to the Gravitational Focus of the Sun: A Critical Analysis — mentioned by sanxiyn

Tue, 27 Feb 2018 04:17:30 GMT

For a more critical look at this concept, I recommend "Mission to the Gravitational Focus of the Sun: A Critical Analysis". https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.06351

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Mission to the Gravitational Focus of the Sun: A Critical Analysis — mentioned by tobmlt

Fri, 11 Aug 2017 17:46:10 GMT

In principle, I am right with ya. We need ways of beating (or at least coping with), the diffraction limit. It's fun to think of, say, stuff like this: https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.06351 (as far as big lenses go) Using the sun as a gravitational lens would be pretty sweet. I have a feeling we will have some more tricks to play with E&M locally before we can go to space on that scale though. edit: My own semi-blind musing has made me curious: metamaterials for super-lensing: https://arxiv.org/pdf/0905.0263.pdf entanglment enhanced microscopes?!: https://arxiv.org/abs/1401.8075 (@shpx linked to…

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Mission to the Gravitational Focus of the Sun: A Critical Analysis — mentioned by JPLeRouzic

Mon, 15 May 2017 07:59:30 GMT

Actually the proposal is a bit more complicated than using a 12 meter large antenna, it is sending this antenna at 550 AU (the FOCAL in "FOCAL antenna"). Geoffrey A. Landis wrote: "The gravitational field of the sun will focus light from a distant source to a focal point at a minimal distance of 550 Astronomical Units from the sun. A proposed mission to this gravitational focus could use the sun as a very large lens, allowing (in principle) a large amplification of signal from the target, and a very high magnification." https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.06351

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