Giant Telescopes of the Future
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Astronomy is big science. It's a vast Universe out there, and the exploration of the cosmos requires huge instruments. This is the 5-meter Hale reflector on Palomar Mountain. When the European Southern Observatory came into being, fifty years ago, it was the largest telescope in the world. ESO's Very Large Telescope at Cerro Paranal is the state of the art now. As the most powerful observatory in history, it has revealed the full splendor of the Universe in which we live. But astronomers have set their sights on even bigger instruments. And ESO is realizing their dreams. San Pedro de Atacama. Tucked amidst breathtaking scenery and natural wonders, this picturesque town is home to indigenous Atacameños and adventurous backpackers alike. Not far from San Pedro, ESO's first dream machine is taking shape. It's called ALMA -- the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array. Close together, the 66 antennas provide a wide-angle view. But spread apart, they reveal much finer detail over a smaller area of sky. At submillimeter wavelengths, ALMA sees the Universe in a different light. But what will it reveal? The birth of the very first galaxies in the Universe, in the wake of the Big Bang. Cold and dusty clouds of molecular gas — the stellar nurseries where new suns and planets are born. And: the chemistry of the cosmos. ALMA will track down organic molecules — the building blocks of life. At 5000 meters above sea level, the array provides an unprecedented view of the microwave Universe. While ALMA is nearly completed, ESO's next dream machine is still a few years away. See that mountain over there? That's Cerro Armazones. Not far from Paranal, it will be home to the largest telescope in the history of mankind. Meet the European Extremely Large Telescope. The world's biggest eye on the sky. Sporting a mirror almost forty meters across, the E- ELT simply dwarfs every telescope that preceded it. Almost eight hundred computer-controlled mirror segments. Complex optics to provide the sharpest possible images. A dome as tall as a church steeple. The E-ELT is an exercise in superlatives. But the real wonder, or course, is in the Universe out there. The E-ELT will reveal planets orbiting other stars. Its spectrographs will sniff the atmospheres of these alien worlds, looking for bio-signatures. Further away, the E-ELT will study individual stars in other galaxies. It's like meeting the inhabitants of neighboring cities for the first time. Working as a cosmic time machine, the giant telescope lets us look back billions of years, to learn how everything began. And it may solve the riddle of the accelerating Universe — the mysterious fact that galaxies are pushed away from each other faster and faster.
Comments
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Here's to hoping we one day get to see some 1km telescope on the far side of the moon ^^ Imagine what we could see!
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Amazing that we are shocked at a $1.3 billion dollar price tag for something that can peer into the beginnings of our universe, but NYC can build a $4 billion dollar train station. hmmm....
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/03/nyregion/the-4-billion-train-station-at-the-world-trade-center.html?_r=0 -
It's as big as a small offshore oil platform. Big telescopes demand big lifting equipment. I would love to see the crane and trucks that will move the super heavy components into place.
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How far can we look into space now?
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they hope to spy God and angels or something. there is nothing out there but the inside of the sphere of the stars which is the limit of this level of existence.
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WHEN IS IT GOING TO BE OPERATING!!??
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Not BIG enough!
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With a 2 trillion dollar budget you could build a radio telescope on the far side of the moon similar to Arecibo.
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ESO, European Southern Observatory. Not ESA :P
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G s k y f o c u s e r
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It doesn't matter how smart you think you are, it doesn't matter how much sense your opinion makes, it doesn't matter who you are, if your opinion disagrees with experiment and observation ITS WRONG! Please direct me to your empirical scientific evidence that what you say is true, otherwise keep your mouth shut because nobody with a brain will take any notice of what you have to say.
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No, we already have, cuntbag. Every prediction exept one, the sea level rise, made by climate scientists has come true, most of them WORSE than predicted.
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We'll soon find out wont we dickhead ; )
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Actually, it's the science-denying retards like you that are the past.
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Go stick your head up a dead bears bum you lying sack of shit and take your bogus pseudo scientists, the msm, the marxist cocksuckers in the corrupted universities, the UN and all the brainless useful idiot drone army with you . You evil fascist bastards are the past you will never be the future - ever..
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Exept almost the entire scientific community's consensus is that Earth is getting warmer (and it is), and that we are responsible for accelerating it considerably (and we are). Global temperatures are getting warmer, and doing so faster than ever before. You're the moron.
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You must be the last man left on earth who believes that utter crap. Congrats moron, I guess?
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Yeah, let's not care about the only Planet we currently can inhabit! No, you fucking moron. We're in a very large part responsible for climate change, and it IS going to do quite a bit of damage. Scratch that, it already HAS done quite a lot of damage. Hurricane Sandy anyone?
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Do that as priority #1.
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"cut unnessary waste like anything to do with 'climate' or environment" No, DON'T do that.
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