"I've thought of it myself but never worked out the math - except to think, 'Probably pretty big,' which turns out to dramatically underestimate the actual answer. But what's really lovely is that grappling with this admittedly bizarre thought experiment has some real-life implications for the future of the science."
"Using Dawes's limit, a formula defining the maximum theoretical resolving power of a telescope, Plait found that such a telescope would need a mirror 3.4 light-years across - which, as he admitted, 'would make for, um, a mighty big telescope.' That's a mirror that would span three-quarters the distance to Alpha Centauri!"
"At a thickness of just one millimeter, the mass of such a mirror would be 'more than 100 million times the mass of Earth,' Plait calculated."
Light from Earth's dinosaur era would reach observers 66 million light-years away today. However, detecting dinosaurs or Earth itself from such a distance presents extraordinary technical challenges. Astronomer Phil Plait calculated that observing a Tyrannosaurus rex would require a telescope mirror spanning 3.4 light-years—three-quarters the distance to Alpha Centauri. Even at one millimeter thickness, such a mirror would weigh more than 100 million times Earth's mass. This thought experiment, while seemingly absurd, has practical implications for understanding telescope capabilities and the theoretical limits of astronomical observation technology.
Read at Futurism
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