SETI from Deep Space - Claudio Maccone (SETI Talks)
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SETI Talks Archive: http://seti.org/talks Dr. Maccone's new technical book about SETI, KLT and space missions to the Sun gravity focus will be presented in this talk. This 400-page book is entitled "Deep Space Flight and Communications", costs (unfortunately) over $100, and is divided into two parts: (1) The first 200 pages describe the astrophysics of light-bending caused by the mass of the Sun. Since the minimal focal distance turns out to lie in between 550 and 1000 AU, any future space mission to exploit this effect must necessarily be a "deep space mission". These FOCAL space missions are studied in the book and a Phase A Proposal was submitted by Dr. Maccone to ESA back in 2000. He now argues that a similar Proposal should be submitted to NASA. (2) The second part of the book is devoted to the KLT as optimal telecommunication tool (better than the FFT). The KLT for SETI was presented by the author in various talks, but, in this book, the reader will find the relativistic KLT also. This is useful to keep the radio link between the Earth and any deep-space spacecraft, such as the FOCAL spacecrafts to 550 AU. Dr. Maccone discovered mathematically that the relativistic KLT eigenfunctions are Bessel functions of the first kind, and that the KLT eigenvalues are the zeros of such Bessel functions. All this paves the way to "Star-Trek-like" relativistic space flights of the future.
Comments
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Using the sun itself as a huge gravitational telescope lens...what an interesting idea. Also to the person who asked, it really does need to be 550 AU out, basically for the same reason that you couldn't focus the Hubble telescope on a paper orbiting 20 feet away. The corona of the sun also obfuscates photons of light in such a way that increases the minimum distance.
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This is a historical presentation. In years to come people will come back to this presentation and topics discussed. Brilliant work!
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Someone really does need to write a less technical (and much cheaper!) book on this topic. For example - what will a gravitational lens image look like? Can we synthesise a focus by collecting light closer in?..and many other questions of a direct practical nature.
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The sun won't sit still for the FOCAL mission. It is constantly being tugged around by the planets, especially Jupiter. However, a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that ion thrusters capable of only accelerating the probe at 0.3 micro-gees can maintain the necessary alignment between the probe, sun, and observed object. But if the thrusters fail, the probe can be out of alignment within twelve hours.
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nice talk, pity the books so expensive or i would buy
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SETI SIGNAL 6EQUJ5 "WOW" Code meaning maybe: The "EQUJ" is Equine meaning "horse" hence the constellation Sagittarius. the "6" is a beginning greeting, and the "5" is an ending salutation. The signal is Strongest at the "U" The "J" is also sometimes used as vowel instead of "I". The 6EQUJ5 code meaning is as follows: "Hello (6), from the "horse" (EQUJ or EQUI)constellation Sagittaruis, (5) Goodbye". This message may have taken 10,000 years to reach earth. Signal is from Sagittaruis, research it
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a brilliant idea
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@theskydartteam Sorry the link was broken - it is now fixed!
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@flooby87 Good because Claudio is coming to talk to us again in November!
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I find Macconi's speech really interesting!
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Where's the audio?
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