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Comment Re:Gold As An Insulator? (Score 1) 14

The only thermal conductivity in space is due to thermal (blackbody) radiation. Gold has higher relfectivity than aluminum for the emission wavelengths of a 300K (room temperature) mirror, so it will have lower emissivity and cool less A clean copper surface is actually better but would oxidize and be far worse by the time it was launched.

Comment Re:Didnâ(TM)t we just spend 10B on JWST (Score 1) 22

I'm not really defending this proposal as there are some terrestrial projects (SKA and CHIME for example) that will get some of the same science for way less money. However it is very different than JWST. The wavelengths this would observe at are 10,000 times longer than JWST can see. The two instruments look at very different phenomena.

Comment Re:Diffraction and Poisson noise are a bitch (Score 4, Informative) 65

Good points, but I think these problems are addressed in the real papers. As you move farther than the 500 AU minimum, the radius of the Einstein ring increases making the occulter easier (and helping with coronal distortion). The lens also has a very large magnification - this increases the number of object photons by the same factor. The real problems seem to be getting there and the blurring due to object motion at these huge magnifications.

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