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What a sad day for our species.

John Michael Godier made an interesting interview with Saptarshi Bandyopadhyay regarding placing a radio telescope on the far (silent) side of Moon. Notably, our moon is also obviously devoid of the ionosphere, but what is less obvious, is that this would allow us to observe wavelengths that have so far never been studied by humans.

https://youtu.be/8c8tG1sAK78




"observe wavelengths that have so far never been studied by humans"

That's pretty exciting. Historically, every time we find a new way to observe the universe, we discover something that fundamentally changes our understanding. (E.g., optical astronomy put the nail in the Aristotelian model. Radio revealed that our galaxy was one of many. X-ray revealed that black holes are real, among other high energy phenomena.)


That seems to be the plan, in the sense that there is no plan for what exactly to listen for. Just start listening.

That said, there are some signals (like the 21cm hydrogen line) from the Universe's Dark Age that have redshifted to what we can expect to listen for in the multiple meter wavelengths, even 10m or more. But what we will learn from this? I agree with you, it will be exciting.


Additional benefit to moon telescope: No corroding moisture and wind stress to slowly degrade and eventually collapse it under the weight of 6X more gravity.

Downside: Harder to get to if you do need to make repairs.


No wind or moisture but constant bombardment by micrometeorites. Sensitive instruments whacked by bullet-like impacts are notably hard to maintain. You could cover all sensitive systems with Whipple shields or something but that's just more mass to loft and assemble.




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