Could we turn the sun into a gigantic telescope?

[uswine]

that's fine but who are the "informed advocates"? There is little research on this and what has been done relies on a long list of assumptions. Saying "informed advocates" feels like an "Appeal to Vague Authority" that is creating an illusion of consensus or expertise. I know Viktor Toth, one of the papers authors, and I have had conversations on this subject with him as he convinced me this is a better path than giant space born synthetic aperture optical interferometry. Yet it is cutting edge fringe and more than a century away with multiple levels of proof of concept yet to be done. Instead of promising theoretical limit, for a proper evaluation, citing lower bound expectations would be more appropriate.

 

[Andrew Wright]

that's fine but who are the "informed advocates"? There is little research on this and what has been done relies on a long list of assumptions. Saying "informed advocates" feels like an "Appeal to Vague Authority" that is creating an illusion of consensus or expertise. I know Viktor Toth, one of the papers authors, and I have had conversations on this subject with him as he convinced me this is a better path than giant space born synthetic aperture optical interferometry. Yet it is cutting edge fringe and more than a century away with multiple levels of proof of concept yet to be done. Instead of promising theoretical limit, for a proper evaluation, citing lower bound expectations would be more appropriate.

I was thinking of Toth and his coauthors. Actually, my biggest doubt here is that I suspect it would be easier to build an 80m space telescope at, say, L2, than it would be to get a 1m telescope to 650 AU. It could look at multiple targets, and wouldn't take 25 years to arrive. Not that building such a thing that would be anything but a difficult, long-term project. Or are there theoretical reasons to believe that it's impossible?
Actually, ignore that, the light-gathering power might be similar, but the resolution would be terrible, in comparison with the SGLF. Like you imply, you would need to use interferometry.

 

[uswine]

I was thinking of Toth and his coauthors. Actually, my biggest doubt here is that I suspect it would be easier to build an 80m space telescope at, say, L2, than it would be to get a 1m telescope to 650 AU. It could look at multiple targets, and wouldn't take 25 years to arrive. Not that building such a thing that would be anything but a difficult, long-term project. Or are there theoretical reasons to believe that it's impossible?
Actually, ignore that, the light-gathering power might be similar, but the resolution would be terrible, in comparison with the SGLF. Like you imply, you would need to use interferometry.

Eventually something of this nature will get built in space... it seems to be clearly in the path and direction of science. We will likely see a couple of new improved James web like telescopes first. The timeline for this is still a century away as I see it

 

[billslugg]

There is no need for a mirror at the "telescope" situated at the gravitational focal point of the Sun. All that's needed is a detector. The Sun is the mirror.

 

[George²]

There is no need for a mirror at the "telescope" situated at the gravitational focal point of the Sun. All that's needed is a detector. The Sun is the mirror.

I'm not agreeing with you.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Well, the Sun is the lens, but there is not mirror involved in the telescopic effect.

Trying to use a mirror to reflect the light back towards the Sun so that it would not require the detector to be such a large distance away from Earth would require an enormous mirror to have any beneficial effect on reducing the Earth to detector distance, so no more practical than simply building an enormous reflector telescope with a curved mirror and dispensing with using the Sun to initially focus the light.

And, I expect that is really what will happen when proposals for a real project get compared for cost and timeliness.