The Evolutionary Biology Lecture of the Week for June 12, 2006 is now available
at:

http://aics-research.com/lotw/

The talks center primarily around evolutionary biology, in all of its aspects:
cosmology, astronomy, planetology, geology, astrobiology, ecology, ethology,
biogeography, phylogenetics and evolutionary biology itself, and are presented
at a professional level, that of one scientist talking to another. All of the
talks were recorded live at conferences.

This is the fourth lecture in a summer-long series on the new science of
astrobiology.

=====================================

June 12, 2006

Part IV: Astrobiology

New Worlds Imager

Webster Cash, University of Colorado, Boulder

33 min.

Before the time of Galileo, all scientists used the unaided eye to observe the
heavens. When Galileo trained his tiny telescope on the sky, its magnification
gave him the same view as if he had traveled 90% of the way to his target. With
his 10 times improvement in angular scale, he saw a new view of the universe,
and revolutionized astronomy.

In this lecture, Webster Cash proposes a new telescope design that will take us
much further yet again, and is likely to have as revolutionary an effect. To
date, no planet has been seen around another star, even though the
gravitational effects of their presences have been measured. The planets are
fainter than their host stars by a factor of 1 to 10 billion
(1:10,000,000,000). If we are ever going to directly image exoplanets, the
glare of the central stars must somehow be suppressed by at least an equivalent
amount.

Cash proposes a startlingly simple idea, The New Worlds Observer, an orbiting
telescope with an accompanying occulting starshade 50,000 km distant.

In its most advanced form, The New Worlds Imager would be able to capture
actual pictures of planets as far away as 100 light-years, showing oceans,
continents, polar caps and cloud banks. If extra-terrestrial rainforests exist,
they might well be distinguishable from deserts. The New Worlds Imager gives
every appearance of being an affordable concept with a very practical
technology that should allow us to conduct direct planet imaging in the visible
and other wavelengths of light by 2018.