Hubble's 10-times sharper telescope is about to go into operation

In astronomy, the supernatural new technologies often start with bulldozers, rubble, and . garbage trucks.

That's exactly what's going on with the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) - the world's largest and most powerful telescope when opened in 2024. Astronomers hope to be able to use the radio. This giant observation to study the ancient universe and look for signs of alien life.

Accordingly, construction teams on a mountain range in Chile have excavated the first soil layers in this $ 1 billion project on Tuesday.

When completed, the telescope will weigh more than 1,000 tons, meaning that the workers will have to dig up to 7 meters of rock so that they can fill cement into this telescope's foundation.

"Above the foundation will be a telescopic structure made up of 1,000 tons of steel, placed inside a 22-storey swivel shell and 56 meters wide" - a representative of GMT said.

When completed, the telescope will weigh over 1,000 tons.

Telescope GMT is currently being built at the Las Campanas Observatory in the Atacama Desert, one of the tallest and driest areas on Earth. This area allows astronomers to get the clearest view of the night sky almost year-round.

To help research the universe, GMT will be equipped with wide mirrors 8.23 ​​meters, weighing nearly 20 tons / plate. When reassembled, the telescope's light absorption area will be about the size of a basketball court.

The telescope will also use "adaptive optical glass" to measure deformation caused by the Earth's atmosphere, correct that interference, and create sharper and clearer images.

"The GMT glass will get more light than any telescope ever built, and its resolution will be the best that humans have ever achieved" - the project website affirmed.

An estimate shows that the image GMT gets will have a resolution 10 times higher than NASA's Hubble telescope.

What can the Giant Magellan telescope discover?

GMT will follow Kepler's space mission.

GMT aims to study galaxies in the vast universe, but it may play a key role in answering whether or not the fact that life on Earth is completely alone in the universe - or At least reinforce the possibility of that reality.

GMT will follow the space mission of NASA's Kepler, which was launched in 2009 and has discovered thousands of new worlds. About 50 of them are about the same size as the Earth and may have favorable conditions to maintain alien life.

But Kepler explored the deep and narrow areas of the night sky. NASA's next mission, called Transitting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), is currently scanning 85% of the entire sky to search for worlds 200 light-years away. TESS is only equipped to detect exoplanets, not to study them in detail.

Another upcoming space mission of NASA is called the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which will probably be strong enough to gather light from the atmosphere of an exoplanet after being put into use. in 2021.

These measurement solutions can help us determine whether an Earth-sized planet has biological signs and perhaps air can breathe.

However, JWST is probably not big enough to capture detailed images of an Earth-sized planet. This is the area where GMT stands out, as it produces images that are 14 times larger than JWST. Here is a comparison between GMT, JWST and some other observations that have been planned in the future:

Comparison between GMT, JWST and some other observatories have been planned in the future.

With such power, the GMT is expected to be able to "look" at extraterrestrial atmospheres.

"When a planet passes in front of its star, a large-type telescope on the ground like GMT can use the spectrum to search for fingerprints or molecules in the planetary atmosphere" - Patrick McCarthy , the project leader said.

The spectrum is the color mixing in the stars' light. When light passes through a planet's atmosphere, the chemicals absorb and leave certain ingredients - like a gun trail after the bullet is fired.

A mixture of oxygen and methane is similar to the Earth's atmosphere, which may be a "fingerprint" of life present on an exoplanet.

McCarthy also said that large and powerful telescopes like the GMT can deduce the weather system and the surface features of planets are trillions of light years away from us.

If the Russian billionaire actually found some way, perhaps we would send small, high-speed spacecraft to the most potential planets in the next few decades.