Watching a Game of Football ... on Another Planet

Astronomers have developed a computer chip which allows them to take pictures of planets orbiting stars other than the Sun and the cleverness is the chip balances all light from the star with the opposing level of darkness to cancel it out of the image to reveal only the planet.  (Science Daily:  New telescope chip offers clear view of alien planets)

According to the developers, one primary interest is to see the planet well enough to determine if there is ozone in the atmosphere since they see that presence as a strong indication of life.


"This chip is an interferometer that adds equal but opposite light waves from a host sun which cancels out the light from the sun, allowing the much weaker planet light to be seen," he said.

PhD student Harry-Dean Kenchington Goldsmith, who built the chip at the ANU Laser Physics Centre, said the technology works like thermal imaging that fire fighters rely on to see through smoke.

"The chip uses the heat emitted from the planet to peer through dust clouds and see planets forming. Ultimately the same technology will allow us to detect ozone on alien planets that could support life," said Mr Kenchington Goldsmith from the ANU Research School of Physics and Engineering.

- Science Daily

Likely the resolution of such telescopes will continue improving and maybe you will be able to watch football games through the interstellar medium ... but I don't watch them now so we can move on to what will you do if life is detected.  Does this mean the planet becomes a candidate for a colony or it does not.  If something is already living there then presumably it does not unless you're really sure what that something may be.

Unless there's some fundamental change in the physics of time dilation, any trip to another star has to be one-way so that's a bit of a problem if there are BEMs (i.e. Bug-Eyed Monsters) there already.

Here, at the Liberal Desk, we have observed the ethics of space as presented in a blue million sci fi stories and almost all of them mandate leaving existing life forms alone.  However, that ethical standard has been abandoned in the weaponization of space and taking that to another star isn't just a colony now; it's an invasion force which will use possibly / probably antiquated weapons.

As to dealing with those space weapons around Earth, it's one thing to shoot down a drone but you will only have to shoot down another one.  It's much better to take out the satellite(s) from which they get their GPS information and cause a large explosion on or nearby to take out all of them.  Without GPS, the drones become nothing more than museum pieces.

It seems it would be relatively simple since such rockets wouldn't even need to be that sophisticated so likely it would be inexpensive to saturate the area of the satellites(s) with explosions, possibly like the flak from WWII back when aerial bombardment actually did anything.  It works the same for the shrapnel from the explosion since that will wreak havoc on everything at that orbital level.

Ed:  they will take out their own GPS that way as well!

Most likely the country being attacked is less-advanced technologically and has less to lose by doing all that damage to space traffic.  Long-term, they screw themselves as well but, in the context of a war, likely that won't matter to them.