Redd Panderson wrote:Has anyone else considered that our most sophisticated "eye" for gazing into deep time looks like this?
There it is again! The Boards of Canada compound eye! It's the James Webb Space Telescope!
I would say it is not our most sophisticated eye, it is our most sophisticated eye in that spectrum coverage yes.
as with BoC, what lies outside the obvious matters likely more than what is readily perceived
"People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do" -Isaac Asimov
The Pioneer plaques are a pair of gold-anodized aluminium plaques that were placed on board the 1972 Pioneer 10 and 1973 Pioneer 11 spacecraft, featuring a pictorial message, in case either Pioneer 10 or 11 is intercepted by intelligent extraterrestrial life.
At the top left of the plaque is a schematic representation of the hyperfine transition of hydrogen, which is the most abundant element in the universe. The spin-flip transition of a hydrogen atom's electron has a frequency of about 1420.405 MHz, which corresponds to a period of 0.704 ns. Light at this frequency has a vacuum wavelength of 21.106 centimetres (8.309 in) (which is also the distance the light travels in that time period).
