World's Most Powerful Telescope Begins Search For Origin of the Universe 82
MrSeb writes "The largest astronomical installation in the world is now operational. ALMA, or the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, is a vast radio telescope made out of 66 12- and 7-meter dish antennae situated 5,000m above sea level, in Chile. Its purpose is to seek out new life and new civilizations and to boldly go where no telescope has gone before. But no, seriously: its job is to peer into the past and investigate ancient stars and nebulae, peer at exoplanets that might support human (or alien) life, and hopefully learn more about interstellar creation and destruction. For now only 20 out of 66 antennae are in place, but when it is complete — late next year — it will have a resolving power far greater than Hubble, according to the European Space Observatory (ESO) that operates ALMA."
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Undersells ALMAs capabilities (Score:5, Informative)
As an astrophysicist who's highly interested in using ALMA, I can say that this short description undersells the capabilities of ALMA. While the image resolution is going to be greater than that of Hubble, ALMA will also be observing wavelength ranges previously unobserved from the ground. While space based instruments such as Herschel have observed some of these ranges in the past, these observations don't even come close to the spatial resolution of ALMA.
Re:Undersells ALMAs capabilities (Score:4, Funny)
Bandwidth and GPU needed? (Score:2)
Seriously, that is highend.
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That undersells it. It can form a 1.21 gigapixel image of the sky at each frequency channel: and if it's like other radio telescopes, it will have thousands of channels. The raw data coming in the front end, before it's reduced down to an image, is even heftier.
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Wow, at that resolution, you can practically see back in time...
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Why are you asking us if it is 42?
Units (Score:3, Funny)
How large is a "large millimeter"?
Re:Units (Score:5, Funny)
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Ummm. you underestimate out arrogance and lack of perception of the outside world's opinion.
We are sick of everyone else not using the imperial system (who's creators even dropped it!)
Not of people complaining we use a non-SI system. We could care less about what everyone else thinks. That's why we have n
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If you could care less why don't you? Budget restrictions?
just sayin'
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About the same as a wee smoot.
Re:Units (Score:5, Insightful)
S-expressions: They're superior to natural grammar.
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You (are (totally correct))
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That's the emacs lisp explanation. :s/e/e -/
The vi explanation is
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It lets us see the little green men even when they're not there.
--
The best cure for seasickness is to go sit under a tree (Spike Milligan)
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God is French- why would he save the imperial measurement system?
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Just don't go pointing it near Uranus.
humph.. telescope... (Score:2, Funny)
ya'll don't need no fancy-schmancy teley-scope to see the church on the corner
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It goes so much deeper than that! If you leave your mind open, all kinds of filth gets in!
Nobody likes to be around people with dirty minds! That's why most tried and true religious organizations routinely institute brain washing, to keep things nice and clean in there!
Re:humph.. telescope... (Score:4, Funny)
I think one of the problems with modern aastronomy is that they often cannot help BUT see that church down the street.
I think it might have something to do with the las-vegas style neon lights, dancing searchlight beams, the well illuminated "second coming landing pad" which tries earnestly to coax jesus to put his foot down there, or the fact that it is owned and operated by Landover Ministries.
But then again, I am one of those heathen "unsaved" that only makes 30k/year, and am excluded from even bronze level membership, so maybe I hold a little bit of jealous bias when I say that it would be a good thing to regulalrly cut power to that light pollution retching eyesore so that astronomers might get some REAL insight into the nature of the heavens, but I don't think it would be a whole lot of it.
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If my interpretation of the bible is correct, Jesus may well appear at Landover Ministries, and utterly lay was
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ya'll don't need no fancy-schmancy teley-scope to see the church on the corner
Actually, that is true. Given that all the observable universe is receding from us, HERE is where the universe originated.
Take that, Copernicus!
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You do if you want to find more than 3 grams of collective brain tissue... Its a church of
Irrelevant comparison (Score:3)
it will have a resolving power far greater than Hubble,
Didn't know they operate in the same frequency band.
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They don't have to. The article is obviously talking about spatial resolution.
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They don't have to. The article is obviously talking about spatial resolution.
Which is EXACTLY why its a perfectly irrelevant, meaningless comparison.
My orange is 5 inches in diameter as compared to my watermelon at 8 inches, therefore that is a tiny apple.
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Lateral resolution is about 0.61*wavelength / NumericalAperture. The smaller this number , the smaller the distance at which two distinct points of light can be resolved.
It is entirely meaningful to compare the spatial resolution of two devices observing in different wavelengths. Shorter wavelengths have a lower theoretical limit , sure. But even if Hubble observes at shorter wavelengths, the ALMA has a big fucking numerical aperture. Which makes its resolution better.
What looks like one galaxy to the Hubbl
Not comparable (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not comparable (Score:5, Informative)
In other words, this radio telescope will be able to discern details the Hubble cannot see.
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I am sure you optics whizzes understand that basic lateral resolution is about 0.61*wavelength / NumericalAperture. The smaller this number , the smaller the distance at which two distinct points of light can be resolved.
It is entirely meaningful to compare the spatial resolution of two devices observing in different wavelengths. Shorter wavelengths have a lower theoretical limit , sure. But even if Hubble observes at shorter wavelengths, the ALMA has a big fucking numerical aperture. Which makes its resolu
ESO (Score:5, Informative)
ESO means European Southern Observatory not European Space Observatory!
Time Lapse Video (Score:2)
Not just ESO (Score:3, Informative)
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Correct. The original two partner institutions were
Later, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan [nao.ac.jp] joined the consortium, to provide the ALMA Compact Array and a second correlator, among other things.
It's sometimes a bit bewildering working in this multi-site environment, but it's mos
What about the VLBA? (Score:2)
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They mean biggest in terms of light collecting power, not baseline.
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While I think ALMA is a really cool project, but I don't think it's got the largest collecting area either. I'm assuming that's what you mean, otherwise I'm not sure what you mean.
ALMA has a collecting area of about 7,000 m2. LOFAR has a collecting area of up to to 300,000 m2, depending on the frequency and antenna configuration used.
http://www.astron.nl/radio-observatory/astronomers/technical-information/lofar-technical-information [astron.nl]
But yeah, there are multiple ways to claim the title "Largest Telescope". Th
Fry: Did you build the Smellescope? (Score:1)
Farnsworth: No, I remembered that I'd built one last year.
Alma (Score:1)
Backronym? I don't know if this qualifies as a potential backronym, since the acronym is of english words, but alma is "soul" in spanish (and it's in chile).
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"Backronym?" doesn't ask anything.
It looks like a clever acronym of English words that makes a Spanish word, giving it a pleasant double meaning. A backronym is when you name something, and come up with something for it to stand for later. AMBER Alert contains a backronym. The original name was after Amber Hagerman, so it was Amber Alert. They made a backronym to make it extra kewl.
Insert Gustave Courbet joke here (Score:2)
Except it's probably goatse for the universe.
Will-They-See-The-Origin-of-the-World? (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Origin-of-the-World.jpg [wikipedia.org]
Center of the universe = beginning? (Score:1)
Yes, yes, I'm sure people will say 'there is no center' but, really, if the universe is expanding then there should be some kind of 'relative' center.
Has anyone tried to computer the red shifting and blue shifting of all the galaxies out there to see if there is some 'common' center they are shifting away from?
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From here. If you went somewhere far away and checked, it would be from there. That's because space is expanding between objects, not objects moving farther apart.
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This is something i don't quite get. i'll give Flatland a read later.
Even if everything is moving away from everything else, there should be some line you could draw that says everything on this side of the line is moving away from everything on that side. Do that for all three dimensions and the lines intersect at the center. Dump a bucket of marbles on the floor in a 2D Big Bang. They would be ALL moving away from SOME single thing. Even if we glue the marbles to a rubber sheet and pull it in all dir
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i'll read it. i saved the link. Thanks.
So that should mean there would be an equal amount of mass on any side of us (unless the Big Bang was asymmetric). And that there is no edge to the universe (for things to be going into).
i can get that from any star that all the others are moving away, but it seems like if we look at *many* stars there should be stars that are moving more away than others.
Blerg. Head hurty.
i'll read the thing.
Alma (Score:1)