12-04, 11:00–11:20 (Europe/Luxembourg), Banquet Room
Nowadays the whole world uses the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) to extract signals out of background noise, but FFT uses just sines and cosines as orthonormal time functions to, and that is an oversimplified situation. Since the discovery of the Hilbert space around 1900, however, a number of orthonormal bases in Hilbert space were used by advanced mathematicians to extract signals out of noise. During the years around World War Two, men like American Harold Hotelling, Finn Kari Karhunen , French Michel Loève and Indian Damodar Kosambi independently came up with the idea of decomposing the incoming stochastic process as an infinite sum of static random variables multiplied by orthonormal time functions. Having so done, the input autocorrelation matrix is diagonalized and the eigenvalues are the elements of the main diagonal, while each eigenfunction is corresponding to just one eigenvalue only (no degeneracy). In quantum physics that is called the eigenvalue equation of the autocorrelation operator. Thus, finding the KLT of a given stochastic process means solving the integral equation whose kernel is the autocorrelation.
This author worked on the KLT while doing his Ph. D. in mathematics at King’s College London (UK) in the 1970s. He then discovered that the KLT eigenfunctions of Brownian Motion are Bessel functions J(t) and the corresponding eigenvalues are the zeros of some derivatives of the Bessel functions. He then found that these results perfectly apply to noisy signals emitted by a special-relativistic spaceship (like StarShot). In fact, in his first book “Telecommunications, KLT and Relativity” (1994, IPI Press, Colorado Springs, USA, website https://bis-space.com/shop/product/telecommunications-klt-relativity/) he analytically worked out several KLTs of interest to space flights and genetics aboard spaceships.
Though these mathematical calculations were published in journals like Acta Astronautica and similar journals, the topic of relativistic interstellar flight was much too ahead of time in the 1990s, and the mathematics were simply too lengthy for immediate computer implementation.
Hopefully the situation is improving now in 2024. Please, kindly read this summarizing paper: Claudio Maccone, Relativistic Interstellar Flight Communication Theorems, Acta Astronautica, Vol. 26, No. 2, pp. 105-117, 1992.
Claudio Maccone (born 6 February 1948, in Torino (Turin), Italy) is an Italian SETI astronomer, space scientist and mathematician.
Career
He obtained two degrees from the University of Turin: in physics in 1972 and in mathematics in 1974. He obtained his PhD at the Department of mathematics of King's College London, England, in September 1980.
In 1985 he briefly held a position as "Professore di ruolo" in Mathematics at "Liceo Scientifico Albert Einstein" in Turin.
He then joined the Space Systems Group of Aeritalia (later called Alenia Spazio S.p.A. and now Thales Alenia Space Italia S.p.A.) in Turin on September 19,1985, and immediately got involved in the design of new space missions.
In 2002 he was awarded the "Giordano Bruno Award" by the SETI League, "for his efforts to establish a radio observatory on the far side of the Moon."
After his early retirement from Alenia Spazio S.p.A. on December 30, 2004, he taught at Politecnico di Torino for five years (2005-2009) at Post-Doctoral level. He was Advisor to Ph.D. candidates in the Aerospace and Electronics Departments of Politecnico di Torino.
Since 2010 he is the Director for Scientific Space Exploration of the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA, based in Paris, France).
From 2012 to 2021 he served as Chair of the IAA SETI Committee.
He has published over 200 scientific and technical papers.
Books
His first technical book was Telecommunications, KLT and Relativity in 1994.
In 1998 his second book was The Sun as a Gravitational Lens: Proposed Space Missions (proposing FOCAL space telescope), IAA Book Award 1999. Both books were published by IPI Press, at Colorado Springs, CO, USA.
Maccone's third book Deep Space Flight and Communications – Exploiting the Sun as a Gravitational Lens was published by Praxis-Springer in 2009. This revolutionary book was translated into Chinese by 2014 and awarded the IAA Book Award in 2018.
In September 2012, his fourth book, Mathematical SETI - Statistics, Signal Processing, Space Missions was published, website.
Maccone's fifth highly mathematical book, Evo-SETI – Life Evolution Statistics on Earth and Exoplanets, was published in February 2021. This book deals with Mathematical Astrobiology. IAA Book Award 2022.
Maccone's sixth book is The Living Galaxy, co-authored with Eugenio Mieli and Andrea M. F. Valli. It is currently in print in both the English and Italian version, and should be published in January 2025.
Honours and awards
The central main-belt binary asteroid 11264 Claudiomaccone was named in Maccone's honor on 2 September 2001, NASA website https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/11264_Claudiomaccone
Maccone is a member of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) and an Associate of “Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF)” in Italy.
Since December 2021 Maccone is serving as Chair of the IAA Moon Farside Protection Permanent Committee. His Co-chair is Prof. Jack O. Burns (University of Colorado at Boulder).
On February 8, 2024, Maccone gave his third speech at the United Nations COPUOS in Vienna about the Moon Farside Protection.
Finally, on March 21-22, 2024, Maccone and co-workers run the First IAA Symposium on Moon Farside Protection in Turin (Torino, Italy), described at this website https://www.moonfarsideprotection.org/
External links
The Sun's Gravity lens and its use for Interstellar Exploration NASA-JPL TALK, August 18th, 1999
Deep Space Flight and Communications Talk at the SETI Institute, 11/25/2009, Video on YouTube (Retrieved 09/30/2011)
Habitable Planet Statistics - Claudio Maccone (SETI Talks) on YouTube
Claudio Maccone: Breakthrough Discuss Workshop – FOCAL Missions to 550 AU Insuring Interstellar LINKS on YouTube (time 20:18 min.), Stanford University, April 2016
Claudio Maccone Talk at Milan (Italy) on YouTube, at the Big History Conference on July 15, 2019
First IAA symposium on Moon Farside protection Three talks by Claudio Maccone at the First IAA Symposium on Moon Farside Protection, Turin (Italy), April 21-22, 2024