Using a zone plate instead of a mirror gets around this.

ECONOMIST: The search for alien life

Extrapolating from these results, they think that an orbiting zone plate measuring somewhere between 15 metres and 40 metres across will be enough to distinguish the spectrum of an Earthlike planet at a distance of 30 light-years.

ECONOMIST: The search for alien life

Instead of occurring at a plate boundary along an area called a subduction zone, where one tectonic plate is diving beneath another, this earthquake occurred in the middle of an oceanic plate, where the faults in the crust essentially moved from side to side instead of up and down.

MSN: Why this Indonesia quake didn't spark a monster tsunami

But on that fateful Friday, when the North American plate slid over the Pacific plate along a subduction zone running 130km (80 miles) off the Pacific coast of northern Japan, the shock leapt from the first segment to a second and on to a third, extending the fault zone some 400km and increasing its intensity more than 30-fold.

ECONOMIST: The myth and reality of the Japanese earthquake

He got three called strikeouts from plate umpire Lance Barksdale, who appeared to have a generous strike zone, and was backed by two double plays.

WSJ: Yanks beat Boston 4-1 as Teixeira, Youkilis return

Where the Pacific plate collides with the Indo-Australian plate, it is forced downwards into the trench, a subduction zone, and the volcanoes are carried with it.

BBC: Undersea mountains march into the abyss

Euro-zone policy makers should consider whether they don't have enough problems on their plate without adding to them.

WSJ: Agenda: Basel III��Don't We Have Enough Problems?