![]() The similar schedules promise intense competition, and yet, with each telescope boasting unique size or design advantages, it’s not all about which one switches on first. All three groups have begun developing their instrumentation. Meanwhile, the TMT and E-ELT projects (to be built in Hawaii and Chile, respectively) are fabricating test mirrors. GMT project engineers leveled their mountaintop site in Chile last spring in October, they finished fabricating the first of seven curved mirrors that will form the telescope’s segmented eye. “If you’re one of the have-nots, you have to figure out something else to do to remain competitive,” McCarthy said.Įven as the three projects seek additional funding, they are treading into the early stages of construction. ![]() Having a share will assure an institution’s standing in the field for decades to come, according to several astronomers unaffiliated with the projects. Universities, government agencies and other scientific organizations around the world are contributing funds to their project of choice in exchange for a future share of telescope time, explained Patrick McCarthy, an astronomer at Carnegie Observatories in California and director of the GMT project. They will be between 5 and 200 times more powerful, depending on the telescope and the task. Better observations are likely to lead to new theories of the birth and evolution of space and time, Gilmore said.Īt projected costs ranging from $900 million to $1.6 billion each, the Giant Magellan Telescope, the Thirty Meter Telescope and the European Extremely Large Telescope - which will have segmented mirrors measuring 24.5 meters, 30 meters and 39.3 meters across, respectively - will dwarf existing optical telescopes (the current largest is 10.4 meters). Resolving this light would reveal the structure and chemical makeup of the universe’s first objects, which, as faint images from the Hubble Space Telescope suggest, developed much earlier than current theories would predict. The universe inflated like the surface of a balloon shortly after the Big Bang, and some places stretched so far from here that their first bursts of light are only now arriving. ![]() The huge telescopes will look back in time at some of the earliest light ever emitted by objects. “We’re basically talking about the gap between 100 million and 500 million years after the universe began that’s the time when the first stars and chemical elements and black holes and other exotica came into existence for the first time,” said Gerry Gilmore, an astronomer at Cambridge University. Scientists hope the competing telescopes - all expected to be running within a decade - will enable them to observe the early universe as it transitioned from a uniformly hot and opaque beginning to a cool, structured state, in which matter became concentrated inside objects, setting light free to roam the cosmos. From the properties of dark matter to how the universe took shape shortly after the Big Bang, some of the universe’s oldest and best-kept secrets could soon be exposed as construction moves forward on three “extremely large telescopes,” each with an expanse of mirrors bigger than a basketball court.
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