Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Overwhelmingly Large Telescope Closer to Reality

Posted by timothy on from the see-zits-on-gerbils-from-alpha-proxima dept.

An anonymous reader submits: "The 100m OWL telescope proposed a few years ago by the European Southern Observatory group (ESO) may actually be built. Currently, the largest aperture for a telescope is the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at a 'very tiny' 16.4m by comparison. This monster is predicted to have a light gathering resolution of about 40 times the Hubble Space Telescope and a sensitivity several thousand times greater. Among many other things, it should be powerful enough to detect and gather spectroscopic data of extra-solar planets in order to determine the atmospheric composition and any signatures for life, like oxygen." We mentioned the OWL in this previous article too.

2 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. right on... by australopithecus · · Score: 4, Funny

    in case funding falls through in the middle of construction, the mirror can also be used to fry a turkey in under ten seconds...
    pass the giblets.

  2. Naming convention by NicolaiBSD · · Score: 5, Funny

    So how are we going to call the next generation of large telescopes? The Even More Overwelmingly Large Telescope? The Incredible Supa-Dupa Overwelmingly Huge Motherf***ing Telescope?
    We are bound to run out of comparatives soon, then all we'll have left is the Largest Large Telescope and then what?