Seems like a lot of work just to find new Netflix customers.

Joking aside, it does sounds ridiculously complicated to pull off.

Maybe we shouldn't be putting shiny any more shiny pieces of metal into orbit any time soon. I don't know if I want the aliens to know about us until LONG after Bush is replaced as president.

THAT's the one that the apes have chosen to represent themselves? Should we try to communicate with the sea life instead, or should we just take the planet?

@Munch: Sorry - I really like the word 'shiny'

So we'll be able to see what their fashion trends were in the 80's and maybe catch the equivalent Alien version of "ALF" when it was still in production.

@Munch: If an alien is smart enough to make it to earth, I'd like to think that instead of contacting the whitehouse they'd just get on the internet and start blogging. Why talk to one human of questionable intelligence when you can communicate with the collective intelligences of billions? That's assuming they don't just scan Wikipedia and decide it's not worth it.

@Gann: Let's just hope that they don't youtube "alien autopsy"

Those bastards are gonna pay for what they did to Blargg!!

Someone say Hubble?

Shouldn't be any more complicated than the LIGO set up they want to send into space for gravity waves that are many times further apart and require better than nanometer accuracy.

Giz - now what's going on?

we're getting crossposts to Jalopnik, etc to comment on?

I think this is going to be last view/ post. The gaudy non related links were one thing - have you got some new Richard Cheese MBA 'fool' on staff or something? WTF going on?

My little hammer covered in aluminum foil (it's all i got) is coming down.

Bye for now.

good look with the pageviews.

I dont understand the permanent wishes of the scientists to find life in another world.

What about that that new life are dangerous aliens like the one at the movies Aliens of Sigourney Weaver.

What about that they are not pacific like us.

We are trying awfully hard to look into deep space for intelligent life when we have yet to fully explore the oceans that cover the majority of our planet. I am guessing that since we have all the time in the world to research things like this, that all the major threats have working solutions found and in place. It would really suck if an asteroid, solar flare, axis shift, etc. were to occur and wipe us all out before getting to watch all the retro alien TV shows we are bound to get soon. Sorry, been watching too many Armageddon shows on Discovery & History channels lately.

Well if it doesn't work as a telescope they can always use it as a Solar Sail.

Cool idea... by the multi-kilometer focal point bit might be a tad hard to overcome.

@flyboy: The cross-posting isn't new and has been going on with various other Gawker sites for ages. I seriously can't tell what you're complaining about.

@TOWken22:

So what, you think there's intelligent life to be found in our Oceans? Like mermaids?

Mermaids exist. And are wonderful individuals.

We are trying awfully hard to look into deep space for intelligent life when there's no compelling evidence of intelligence here on Earth.

On a more serious note, the Frensel zone plate could be tied to the focal point object (where the "real work" is done) by polymer lines - ropes, if you will - and the whole mess would swing about a common center of gravity to change orientation.

Wasn't really what I was hinting at, but now that you mention it there could be a whole nation of sea people down there secretly plotting to get revenge on us lung-touting monsters who take pleasure in growing sea monkeys and making them battle to the death. Or just fish and stuff.

@TOWken22: hey, unless you get me a green skinned hot alien mama from the deep see, I really don't care much for the oceans. captn Kirk showed us the way.

[video.aol.com]

A 30-meter panel may require a spaceship with secondary lens and camera located several kilometers away to line up within a few millimeters

You know who we need for contractors on this one? The Ringworld Engineers.

@flyboy: Goodbye! I'm going up on the ledge now. Nobody try to talk me down, my mind's made up. Life just won't be worth living anymore. (SOB!)

@dead_red_eyes: @froggy: Fine, fine you guys have convinced me, screw the ocean, onto space. So are their hot alien women out there then?

@flyboy: Shhhhhh. Everybody be very quiet. It looks like flyboy is just waking up.

@Log1c:

LISA is what you are looking for, I think.

I think two things that make this different from LISA is that LISA is only trying to keep test masses moving in geodesics (free fall), rather than a super-fancy camera, and that a 30 m piece of foil makes a hell of a solar sail, as someone pointed out, so keeping things all nicely squared away would be harder. Also, (OK, three things), it doesn't matter where the LISA stations are - they can just wander around - this thing will have to 'slew' to look at specific objects.

I believe a similar idea is being tossed around for the terrestrial planet finder (TPF) of having an occulting disk to block out the light from the star, and then positioning the telescope behind it, so the telescope only sees the light from the planet.

For the cost, I'd rather see many 30m-class (or bigger) telescopes on earth. But as we all know, money costs less in space.

Sounds do-able. The idea that the focal point for the lens would have to be kilometers away doesn't seem to create an insurmountable problem. Down here in the dirt it would be a bit of work...

@Xenobiologista: Guys (and I use the term generically, ladies), you are unglued unneccesarily. I worked on a project about 25 years ago that would allow two satellites to keep pointed at each other to a tolerance of 1/2 arc second from several hundred miles away. The analogy was that a pitcher standing in Wrigley Field in Chicago, could pitch a strike...in Busch Stadium in St. Louis! And that was with technology 25 years ago!

@Guy-Fawkes: You also are right on target, and I learned about this tidal effect in a different Niven novel: "The Descent of Anansi." Great book, and very educational.

This is not that hard.

Couldn't we just put the primary "lens" on a balloon and the secondary on the ground? Or will the atmosphere have an effect on the telescope?

@Munch: As long as it isn't slash-dot, cause if the aliens hit that, they'll destroy the planet just to put the galaxy out of it's misery.

Dman-it, that was supposed to be @Gann:

With all of this conversation about looking for life in outer space and exploring our oceans...I can't believe that you've all already forgotten about the dolphins!!

Focal length of several km? This is why it will go on top of a mountain. Dig a hole and bury the focus point at the end of a tunnel. Should work until the first earthquake. And the digging will discover gold and silver to pay for it.

So it will allow ground based UV observations eh? Does this Fresnel imaging magically get rid of the atmosphere as well then, so that the UV isn't all absorbed/scattered?

The only way you can do UV astronomy is by going into space.

@JChristopher:
Nah.....
Just create a prism the size of the Keops pyramid, mount it on top of the fresnel lens and go watch the focal point at the top of Mt. Everest or K2.

If next year's budget allows it, they can build a second setup to make the biggest binoculars on the planet so they can search and look at ET's tatas...

Satellites... to hard to service an lube....

:)

Hmmm, if we just had a shuttle that was 30+M wide and several kilometers long we could launch this thing tomorrow!

@ps61318: Old or new Busch? :p

"M-Class", for anyone wondering about the term, is not the term professional astronomers use, but it refers to planets located within the "habitable zone" in which the planet is not too close to its star and not too far away, so that temperatures 'friendly' to life as we know it can exist on the surface.

@Buran: Well, M-Class is a Star Trek term. And in Enterprise, they revealed that the M stands for Minshara, a Vulcan word.