Chile To House World’s Largest Telescope

April 27th, 2010

A new $1 billion telescope project is expected to be built in Chile’s northern desert. The 42-meter European Extremely Large Telescope (sounds like an extenze commercial) will watch the skies for exoplanets (Earth-like planets around stars) as well as seek to unravel the mystery of dark matter and dark energy.

The telescope will be built at 3,060 meters (10,040 feet) above sea level on a mountain in Chile’s northern, mine rich Atacama desert, which is favored for major telescopes because of low levels of water vapor and clear night skies. It is expected to be completed and enter into use in 2018. Yeah…it is a bit in the future.

“The size will allow us to see basically Earth-like planets,” said Lars Lindberg Christensen, head of the observatory’s education and public outreach department in Garching, Germany.

“It will be able to test fundamental physics to a degree never before possible,” he added. “We are going to study black holes, galaxies and dark matter and dark energy, which are the two completely unknown composites or parts of the universe.”