It is that time again…..I report on all the news about space…..news that no one can use……

The world’s largest telescope is underwater…..

Russian scientists on Saturday launched one of the world’s biggest underwater space telescopes to peer deep into the Universe from the pristine waters of Lake Baikal.

The deep underwater telescope, which has been under construction since 2015, is designed to observe neutrinos, the smallest particles currently known.

Dubbed Baikal-GVD, the telescope was submerged to a depth of 750-1,300 meters (2,500-4,300 feet), around four kilometers from the lake’s shore.

Neutrinos are very hard to detect and water is an effective medium for doing so.

The floating observatory consists of strings with spherical glass and stainless steel modules attached to them.

https://www.sciencealert.com/russian-scientists-deploy-a-floating-observatory-in-lake-baikal

“Take us to warp 4″….a captain aboard the Enterprise….that might sound like a line from a movie but it may not be so far fetched…..

The speed of light is a big constraint when it comes to space exploration. It’s the rate at which light travels in a vacuum, precisely 186,282 miles per second (29,9792,458 metres, or 300,000 kilometers, per second). It’s unchangeable, and as far as we currently know, nothing can exceed that speed. That may seem pretty fast, but compared to the sheer size of space, it’s like trudging through molasses. 

For scale, the moon is approximately 238,855 miles (384,400 km) from Earth; It takes about 2.51 seconds for light to make a round trip from the Earth and back. Mars is 3 minutes and 2 seconds for a one-way trip, or six minutes and four seconds both ways. It would take 4.6 hours for light to reach Pluto, and another 4.6 hours to bounce back. Finally, it would take us 4.24 years traveling at the speed of light to reach Alpha Centauri Bb—the closest exoplanet from Earth. That’s traveling at top speed.

https://interestingengineering.com/direct-fusion-drives-flying-across-space-blink-of-an-eye