Mr. Mulherin boasts that all Torus Technology's
Pro-Spec Mirrors are guaranteed to have an RMS Wavefront Error of 1/14 or less.
Let's see just how good this is: Light
waves and Radio waves are one and the same thing. They are just disturbances
of the same electromagnetic spectrum at different wavelengths. The wavefront
of light reflected off the mirror's surface is a wavefront bearing the impression
of the mirror's surface on it. This wavefront also carries the image of
whatever the mirror is pointed at. Thus the wavefront may be compaired to the
carrier wave of an Amplitude Modulated Radio wave upon which the signal is the
image.
The radio signal's noise (static) is the counter
part of the mirror's wavefront errors. The optical Peak-to-Valley measurement
corresponds to the Peak-to-Peak voltage measurement of a radio signal's noise.
Thus I can expect the mathematics used in Electronics to yeild meaningful results
when applied to optical problems of a similar nature.