The wise old Papa Smurf
Let us cast the distance overestimation problem into sharp relief by using an analogy and using more familiar targets. A recently constructed optical telescope designed to be used aboard the MIR space station is undergoing initial testing and calibration. The mission has already lasted several weeks. The mission specialist for the telescope has been occupied full-time at tracking down the source of a periodic focussing problem that occurs whenever the telescope passes from sunlight to darkness.
This stress combined with the long duration space flight in the cramped crew quarters has generated a certain amount of tension which has accumulated over the weeks between the crew members. To lighten the atmosphere and relieve some of this stress, one of the cosmonauts decided to play a little trick on his collegue : During his last space walk to adjust the telescope's mounting, he secretly flung into deep space a small 100 gram latex smurf figurine a popular comic book character. Later, his crewmates inquired about the disapearance of his favorite mascot, he claimed to have lost it. He reassured them that if everybody looked hard enough they would eventually find it in a place they would least expect. They would soon find out the double meaning behind this last statement.
During a routine calibration, the prank playing cosmonaut was supposed to point the telescope at a bright quasar, instead, he targeted the smurf he had recently thrown, now endlessly tumbling into deep space and adjusted the autoguiding tracker to lock onto it rather than some surrounding guide stars. The mission specialist assumed that the object was at infinity and focussed the telecope accordingly. What resulted on the computer's video monitor was a strange sight : an object with a very unusual spectra and whose luminosity varied wildly because of the tumbling, the direct sunlight began to heat one side of the smurf and small puffs of boiling latex vapour were beeing ejected like tiny little jets.
Until recently astronomical data was selfishly kept secret by garanteed time observers and other scheduled astronomers fearing that their contributions to astronomy would be diminished if their data were easily available to all before they could publish their interpretations of the data.
However, because of recently slashed budgets, NASA gave the astronomers an ultimatum: In the interests of good public relations and to increase the profile of astronomical reaserch, it would be a good idea to make the data instantly available 'live' over information super-highway to the general public as it happens. The astronomers were left with little choice but to concede or lose what remained of their decreasing share of precious data from orbiting instruments.
The data was relayed to a telecomunications relay satelite, and made instantly accessible to anybody on the internet. What followed was a frenzy to explain how these rapid oscillations and jets were telltale signs of superluminal motion rapid variabilty of a black hole devouring huge amounts of primordial matter. The ususual spectra must be the reshifted emission from hot gases excited by the enourmously powerful x-rays from the black hole. From the telltale emission lines the redshift was measured and the distance to the object was estimated at millions of megaparsecs, implying that the object was emitting an amount of energy a million times greater that our own galaxy. The rapid variability implied that the object was no larger that the distance it would take light to cross from one end of the light emitting region to the other. This translated to power densities that only an object of incredible gravitational pull could manage to confine into such a small volume.
When the charade lasted long enough, the cosmonaut executed a subroutine which properly focussed the telescope, to reveal the sharp outline of his smurf tumbling in outer space. Along with the new pictures, a small inline cartoon appeared delivering a warning :
The wise old Papa Smurf
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