Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey brain Stuff, I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and this is a classic episode from our previous host, Christian Sager. This one came about when we got curious, what all have we humans left behind on the Moon and can we check it out with a decent telescope? Hey, brain Stuff, Christian Sager? Here, did you know that over a hundred items have been
left behind on the surface of the Moon. We're talking about spacecraft, moon boots, cameras, flags, and even nine six bags of urine, feces and vomit. That's right, everybody, astronauts dumped their porta potties on the Moon. Are you thinking
what I'm thinking. We could fly to the Moon and steal all that stuff, but we better hurry because several states have lobbied to make lunar landing sites into national monuments, and while we'd get arrested before we execute this great moonheist, though, we'll need to locate where the astronauts left the loot. But wait a minute, can we even see what they left there? It turns out no, not yet. See the resolving power of even our best telescopes is too low.
Given our distance from the Moon. The best available today is the Hubble space telescope from its location in Earth's lower orbit. The Hubble only has about a one and fifty meter resolution when pointed at the Moon, so for example, something really big like a football stadium would only occupy two pixels in an image that the Hubble could generate. We definitely wouldn't be able to see lunar rovers or landing bases, much less those precious bags of Armstrong's poop.
Probably the only thing we can currently see on the Moon is a laser beam reflector left there in nineteen sixty nine to measure the distance back to Earth. However, there are several telescopes currently in production that, once finished, will enhance the visibility of the Moon's surface significantly. For instance, the giant Magellan telescope in northern Chile should be working by the year and it's planned to have ten times the resolving power of the Hubble, giving it close to
a fifteen meter resolution. The lunar lander base is close to ten meters long, so you could see it, but barely. But why settle for squinting when the superior James Web space telescope is shooting for a launch date in the web will have eighteen hexagonal reflectors to collect light with, making it seven times the size of the Hubble and a hundred times more powerful. That will give it a one point five meter resolution, more than enough to locate landers,
rovers and hopefully bags and bags of excrement. How much do you think we can get for those on eBay? And Today's episode was written by Christian and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.