Observing the Sun Is the Ultimate Pinnacle of Telescope Design

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The earth doesn't have anywhere near enough gravity to create a substantial gravitational lens, but it has an atmosphere. An atmosphere refracts light, it bends light. And so we've proposed in my team that you could use this refraction to similarly create an earth-sized telescope called the telescope. But it's a very difficult system to test because you essentially have to fly out to these focus points and these focus points lie beyond the moon. If it was something to lower Earth orbit, it'd be easy. You could just attach a CubeSat to the next Falcon 9 rocket or something can test it out. We propose this as a possible future, a technological way of achieving these extreme goals

David Kipping is an astronomer at Columbia University, director of the Cool Worlds Lab, and host of the Cool Worlds YouTube channel. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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OUTLINE:
Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
(00:00) – Introduction
(05:10) – Habitable exoplanets
(15:30) – Alien life in our Solar System
(27:20) – Starship
(31:28) – James Webb Space Telescope
(44:47) – Binary planets
(55:04) – Exomoons and Kepler-1625b
(1:08:34) – Discoveries of alien life
(1:22:15) – Aliens
(2:08:43) – Oort clouds
(2:19:30) – Future of astronomy
(2:32:45) – Alpha Centauri
(2:45:03) – Kardashev scale
(2:56:41) – AI and space exploration
(3:13:37) – Great Filter
(3:24:51) – Colonization of Mars
(3:31:35) – Simulation hypothesis
(3:43:48) – Advice for young people
(3:48:06) – Meaning of life