Giant Magellan Telescope Poised to Enter Construction Phase

[Rick]

Giant Magellan Telescope Poised to Enter Construction Phase

The Giant Magellan Telescope project has successfully passed two major reviews, completing its detailed design phase and positioning the project to enter the construction phase. Taking advantage of the world's most advanced mirrors – designed and built at the University of Arizona –  the 25-meter telescope will have more than six times the light-gathering area of the largest telescopes today and 10 times the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Scientists will use the GMT to explore distant and potentially habitable planets around other stars, to explore the Universe in the first billion years after the big bang, and to probe the mysteries of dark matter, dark energy and massive black holes. It will be located at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, atop a remote mountain peak in the Chilean Andes.

More: http://uanews.org/story/giant-magellan-telescope-poised-to-enter-construction-phase

[Kenny]

When and how did the universe begin? A global group of astronomers wants to answer that question by peering as far back in time as a large new telescope will let us see. Wendy Freedman headed the creation of the Giant Magellan Telescope, under construction in South America; at TEDGlobal in Rio, she shares a bold vision of the discoveries about our universe that the GMT could make possible.

http://www.ted.com/talks/wendy_freedman_this_new_telescope_might_show_us_the_beginning_of_the_universe