Overwhelmingly Large Telescope Closer to Reality

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.

Comments

Re:point your telescope this way!

[DaneelGiskard]

okay, where do I sign up? ;-)

Gerbil Acne?

[Monthenor]

I'd just like to say that gerbils don't get acne. And I should know. Such a discovery would, of course, rock the scientific world to its frightened little core, but I don't believe it will happen in our lifetime.