Posted 3/02/2006 05:29:00 PM by Douglas

The end of ground based astronomy? Somehow I doubt it.

Ground-based astronomy could be impossible in 40 years because of pollution from aircraft exhaust trails and climate change, an expert says.

Aircraft condensation trails - known as contrails - can dissipate, becoming indistinguishable from other clouds.

If trends in cheap air travel continue, says Professor Gerry Gilmore, the era of ground astronomy may come to an end much earlier than most had predicted.

"It is already clear that the lifetime of large ground-based telescopes is finite and is set by global warming," Professor Gilmore, from Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy, told reporters recently in London.

"There are two factors. Climate change is increasing the amount of cloud cover globally. The second factor is cheap air travel.

"You get these contrails from the jets. The rate at which they're expanding in terms of their fractional cover of the stratosphere is so large that if predictions are right, in 40 years it won't be worth having telescopes on Earth anymore - it's that soon.

Ok, now the bias is revealed. Global warming and evil jet engines (which cause global warming, too, I'm sure.) Don't these guys every get tired of telling us about the looming environmental apocalypse that never seems to come? I just can't imagine a world so blanketed from aircraft contrails that dorks hogging the eyepiece in the observatory can't see what they're looking at. But if that's the case, that's just more evidence that we need bigger and better telescopes. On Mars. There's no atmosphere there to mess up.