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Canadians Plan to Build World's Biggest Telescope
Jerry Rivers writes "If all goes according to plan, Canada will be home to the world's largest telescope.
The international project, which has the support of the U.S. Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics, is still in the funding stages but when finished it will be roughly the size of a football field.
Maybe with this they'll finally find the Restaurant at the End of the Universe."
They've got something to prove... a little bit of telescope envy.
$750 million 10 years to build! This better have some hi-def images of little green men at the end of it
Not quite done by Canadians then. Especially if it's getting funding from a US company...
Death by snoo-snoo!
Maybe with this they'll finally find the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
Silly editors...by the time the light from the end of the universe gets here, Earth will have been destroyed by the Vogons.
Oh, and when it happens, let me be the first to say:
DUPE!
Say, if Americans were going to build the world's biggest telescope, the title would not read "Americans Plan to Build World's Biggest Telescope", it would read "World's Biggest Telescope to be Built".
Why pick out the country that built it?
I heard the optics will be coated in maple syrup.
I hope they figure how to clean the lense when it snows in winter. I for one don't think shovel would be a good idea on those expensive lenses.
Maybe with this they'll finally find the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
So you aren't actually familiar with Douglas Adams' work then? Because "the end" refers to the death of the universe, not the farthest reaches of the universe. Unless this new telescope can see into the future (and fiction), it's not going to find the Restaraunt. Looks like somebody's name-dropping to win geek points. Sorry, we can spot fakes a mile off.
Telescopes look back in time, not forward.
We might have a shot at a glimpse of the Big Bang Burger Bar, though.
-Peter
"It's got to be a site that's meaningful from an astrological point of view, but we don't want it to be in place that's so hostile that scientists and people won't go there," Halliday said. of course he (probably) said astrophysical
The telescope refered to in this article is to be the world's largest *optical* telescope. The world's largest telescope will continue to be the Arecibo radio telescope.
A glorious victory for US scientists -- we seem to have conquered the Canadian Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics. My Canadian colleagues will taste the "lite-beer of defeat" at last ;->
A telescope roughly the size of a footabll field? NFL or CFL? A CFL field is much bigger.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
When completed this Canadian telescope may well be the largest single telescope.
However, is it larger than the effective size of the Very Large Telecope array? Or the Overwhelmingly Large Telescope to be built in Chile?
Ehhhhh?!
"If all goes according to plan, Canada will be home to the world's largest telescope." But the article says: "Scientists are testing possible sites for the telescope in Hawaii, Mexico and Chile." In other words Canadians will build it (with International funding), but the actual location will be closer to the equator.
a beaver will chew through a wire, a moose will get electrocuted, and the scientists will take pictures of their asses after drinking ultra cheap but ultra strong canadian beer.
On a side note,
You know, they are building a new atom smasher in Canada as well. Perhaps, with all this science going on in my great country, maybe, JUST maybe, we could actually figure out what is in poutine gravy? I'm afraid of the answer mind you, but insanely curious at the same time.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
A CFL field is 110 yards between the goal lines, and each endzone is 25 yards deep if I recall correctly. http://www.cfl.ca/
:-)
Rules are listed at that site anyway.
Way to be ambiguous Sumitter. Don't you know that Slashdot standard sizes only come in "Libraries of Congress" for data, and "VW Bugs" for things that come from, or go up into space?
Our balls are bigger*. Now our telescopes are too
*Actual official CFL t-shirt slogan.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Indeed, it sounds like these people are scientific refugees, victims of the anti-science trend taking a hold in the US.
Between the extremists trying to force theology into science classes, and an administration which is plain anti-scientific in its own right, things just aren't looking up. At least science will progress elsewhere, even if it is not in the United States.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
From TFA "B.C. engineering company AMEC" and "AMEC started working on this four years ago and was joined by the National Research Council of Canada to draft concept designs"
Not to mention that it's going to be in Canada, and would be physically built by Canadians in that case.
Happy Noodle Boy says "F###ing doughnut! Mock me? You fried cyclops!!"
With Hubble getting rather old, I wonder if this will be its successor. Though I can't help but think that a telescope wizzing around in space would be much more useful than one on the ground. The fact that you don't necessarily have to wait 24 hours to take another look at the same bit of the sky surely has to be an advantage.
Silly editors. Don't they know that the more powerful a telescope, the farther back in time it sees?
Infuriate left and right
The telescope will be made of many (thousands) small mirrors each of which have to be controlled with an accuracy of approx. 1/14000 the thickness of a human hair. (According to interview on CBC Radio One aired earlier today.) The Canadian contribution will be the support structure (with required accuracy as stated above.) Who is doing the optics hasn't been decided yet.
Eh?
printf($randomline(sigs.txt) \n "-- "$randomline(authors.txt));
-- myself
I read about this the other day. The plan is to build the telescope in Canada but its final location isn't decided yet. Hawaii is one possibility.
If jeb is in office, we will almost certainly try to build a big bomb to hit them with.
They probably want the thing as far away from man-made light as possible. The two best spots for this are at the poles - and Canada owns one of them.
You know what they say about countries with big telescopes...
Or was it "Countries with big telescopes are making up for something"?
You know what would be cool though, if the universe was repeating (like a circle) and you could build a telescope so big that you could look somewhere and see yourself looking at yourself.
Wow, what did I smoke?
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
Greenland will contest that Canada owns it. But they will have the capability to build it away from light and through thinner atmosphere.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck.
"It's got to be a site that's meaningful from an astrological point of view, but we don't want it to be in place that's so hostile that scientists and people won't go there," Halliday said.
I expect that he didn't.
Can anyone confirm that this telescope will be more powerfull than the huble? and by how much.
If it's not 3x more magnification at a minimum of the huble scope, then 10 years is going to be a waste of time.
Black Sky
2D Elite Inspired Game
First there was the Very Large Telescope.
Then there was the Extremely Large Telescope.
As of a year or so ago, no kidding, they're building the Overwhelmingly Large Telescope (official name).
So what name does this one get?
The Staggeringly Large Telescope? Not as big as "overwhelming". The Astonishingly Large Telescope? Also too small. Ditto for "Frighteningly".
Stupefyingly? Or perhaps the Surpassingly Large Telescope?
The Horrifyingly Large Telescope?
Possibly The Nightmarishly Huge Telescope. Or the Blood-Curdlingly Large Telescope.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
Apparently everything's bigger in Canada!
Isn't the southern hemisphere better suited for a large telescope? It's my understanding that the southern face of the earth looks more towards the center of the galaxy and the sky is much clearer down there, which means a better look at the sky. If I'm not mistaken, most of the largest telescopes today are in the southern hemisphere.
Silly Canadians
Sure but how many Libraries of Congress (or LoC) of data can it gather per fortnight is what I really want to know.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
"Maybe with this they'll finally find the Restaurant at the End of the Universe."
Sure, but we would have had to put our reservations in about 2 millenia ago...
Well, yes, I found the end of Mostly Harmless to be a let down. Obviously Douglas Adams wanted the series to end so he wrote as final an ending as you can imagine. If I had enough motivation to be a fanfic writer, I would have created a follow-up based on a loophole that allowed one Earth to survive. It turned out that there is one more dimension than the creators of the transdimensional Guide were aware of. That extra dimension is the place where Bob reigns (was it Old Thrashbarg who worshipped Bob?), and Earth still exists...
...". I should give it another listen soon.
OTOH, the rest of the book was great. The whole 'Perfectly Normal Beasts/Domain of the King' business had me in awe of Adams' imagination. I've actually never read the book, since I have the audio version read by Adams himself. Marvelous to hear him intone, "Click, hum
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In 10 years, won't the Hubble have burned up, or be on its last legs, because we abandoned the upkeep?
Did this make anyone else think of Canadian Bacon?
.. and let me be the first to welcome our new Canadian masters.
m0nstr42.blogspot.com
It's Monday morning, and Toronto resident Steve Dorman shares a quick breakfast of "eggs" (a native food) with his "wife" (an officially state-sanctioned mate), and discusses yesterday's poor showing by the hometown team in "baseball" (a popular local sport). After a kiss on his wife's cheek, he hops on the "subway train" (a mode of subterranean transport) to the office.
This is life in exotic Canada City, the capital set deep in the heart of the mysterious land known as Canada (pronounced CAN-a-da).
Like his estimated 35,000 fellow countrymen, Dorman is proud to be a "Canadian." Located 120 miles north of Buffalo, NY, Canada is, according to Dorman, "a nation with a government and laws distinct from those of the United States." It also has a military, a system of taxation, and periodic free elections to select political leader s. It even has its own currency, says Dorman, various denominations of "dollars" that can be exchanged for the many products manufactured in Canada, including Canadian bacon and ice.
Canada City, Canada's largest community, is located in a place called a "province," a subdivision not unlike the cantons of Switzerland. There are 10 Canadian provinces in all, from Nova Scotia in the east to British Columbia in the west. And, much like America's states, nearly every one of the provinces has its own capital. But make no mistake--there's nothing provincial about these provinces. Canada has both feet planted firmly in the 20th century.
"In fact, Canadians enjoy advancements such as refrigerated food, zippers and printing," notes Dorman, an "accountant" who goes to work wearing the comfortable trousers, dress shirt and necktie that form a traditional Canadian costume. "Our industries are large and varied, ranging from logging to automobile manufacturing."
Not too shabby for a nation that just 240 years ago had no electricity.
Canada City
One area in which Canada certainly has the U.S. beat is languages. Canadians speak not only English, but also French. In fact, according to Prime Minister (roughly Canada's equivalent of a president) Jean Chrétien, "French is the primary language in some parts of the country, and English is in others. The national language question has divided our nation terribly, with Quebec even recently threatening to leave the union."
Canada has produced many prominent people who have gone on to great success in hockey. Among them is Colorado Avalanche goaltender Patrick Roy, who says hockey is the "national sport" of the Canadianers.
"It's in our blood, it's part of our heritage, and it brings people together," he says of the sport Canada picked up from America in the late '50s. So appreciative is Canada, it even has hockey teams called the "Oilers" and "Jets," named after its favorite American football teams.
Despite the language problem and other difficulties, at least one Canadianer is optimistic about his country's prospects in the new millennium.
"Canada will remain free, proud and strong in t he new century," says Dorman, heading off for another day of what in Canada is known as "work." "Our nation will continue to be a beacon to those throughout the world who value liberty, dignity and human rights."
Aww, isn't that cute? At times like this, there's really only one thing left to say: Oh, Canada!
This feature has been provided by the Knight-Ridder news service. It is actually an old The Onion article.
I guess I did!
Thanks for the tip.
Infuriate left and right
The telescope is 30m in diameter.
A football field is roughly 100m long, and 59.4m wide.
By my calculations, the field is about 8x bigger than the telescope.
If the new telescope gives me a better look at the Canadian named Lala, I'm all for it.
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My guess is that it will be a Waffle House...
Canadians Plan to Build World's Biggest Telescope
You misspelled "bong".
I'm no Astronomer, but why are they building a refractor? Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't a refractor have several disadvantages over a reflector?
And if you build a reflector, can't you make it much bigger? (Because the mirror can be supported from below too, while a lens can only be supported from the sides).
and chances are it will be a MacDonalds
As there's the Euro50 project (50m in diameter) that is allready in the final planing stages (ergo, past funding stage). Sure not everything is set in stone yet, lots of stuff still to be ratified upon ... thought it's progressing along quite nicely I might say.
PS. I'm biased, as I am kind of involved =) .... so it doesn't quite show the progress that has been made....
PPS. Yes, the homepage is out-of-date, hasn't been updated since it was created
The primary mirror will be able to alter its shape to compensate for deformation due to gravity at various elevations etc. That's "active optics" and you're right - that's no small challenge.
:)
However the biggest outstanding problem is over coming turbulence in the atmosphere. That's Adaptive Optics and a hot research topic at the moment. Any telescope bigger than about 300mm isn't diffraction limited. It's limited by the atmosphere (Fried's coherence length aka r0).
There are some nasty requirements for AO. The detection of wavefront deformation and correction are huge engineering challenges. Most of the AO system deformable mirrors sit behind the secondary mirror although there's a fair bit of effort going into deformable secondaries atm eg. MMT and LBT. It costs big bucks for that kind of development and there are a *lot* of AO systems gathering dust because they were sooo expensive to keep tweaking with.
If I had the purse strings I'd want to see their AO design before they got a penny.
Still... good luck to 'em
Cheers
Stevo
Forget the truth. Science is fact.
Adaptive optics goes a long way toward compensating for turbulence. The unique value of a space telescope comes from being able to stare at one point of sky, as you point out, and most compellingly from studying wavelengths that don't get through the atmosphere at all.
Ground telescopes are good for sky surveys, spectroscopy, and economy (which translates to more available observing time).
What *is* the deal with Americans and your obsession with measuring stuff with football fields?
A Link to Wikipedia of "Restaurant at the End of the Universe" is strongly required...
How about the Texascope, since everything's bigger in texas?
Everybody knows all the cool stuff in space is only visible from the southern hemisphere.
Will this help my horoscope be more accurate? It must be so, since the article itself says so....
"It's got to be a site that's meaningful from an astrological point of view, ..." Halliday said.
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
I thought things were going more towards arrays of smaller telescopes. It's hard for me to imagine a single piece of glass 30 meters in diameter, with any precision at all. Surely the sagging from gravity alone would wreak havoc as it was aimed. Am I totally misunderstanding this project, and why not an array of smaller 'scopes whose total area is pi*15^2?
I'm sure he was misquoted, but it really bugs me when I (often) see this confusion between astronomy and astrology in the media. At best, it shows the reporter's ignorance of the difference. At worst, it further confuses the public into thinking wrongly that astrology actually has a scientific basis. Sigh.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
The Hubble primary mirror is only 2.4 meters. This one is 30 meters. In addition the Hubble's mirror was flawed from it's very creation. http://www.uoguelph.ca/~ebaig/brian.html
The Hubble takes very cool images. But it is obsolete technology. Hubble is not the be-all and end-all of all telescopes for ever and ever. I find it interesting that people almost worship the instrument. In addition it is already past it's original operational life. Someday it will fail.
There are now techniques that correct for the earth's atmospheric distortion which enable earth-based telescopes to be much better than the Hubble. And also, the Hubble cost $1.5 billion!
So is this new telescope worth it? I think it is. Especially since it is being funded by people and companies in the private sector and not by government taxes.
...but I already joined the discussion. ROTFL!
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
After the exchange rate, this comes to the size of a beaver and will cost $42.69 to build.
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The official site of the Canadian aspect of the project can be found here: http://tmt.astro.utoronto.ca/
The article says that the telescope will use a 30 meter diameter lens, which is completely ridiculous, given how much it would weigh, how insanely perfect the glass would have to be, etc. Another article at http://www.ccnmatthews.com/news/releases/show.jsp? action=showRelease&searchText=false&showText=all&a ctionFor=565556> says: The Thirty-Metre Telescope, called TMT, will dwarf existing telescopes and will be housed in an observatory the size of a large stadium. Unlike current telescopes, which have one mirror, this will have 780 mirrors side-by-side acting as one big mirror.
So this telescope will be a reflector.
Esoteric reference.
Call Steve over at Apple. Surely he has an adjective that's bigger than overwhelmingly. For instance:
ILT: It's Impossible Large.
I happen to have the good fortune to work on The Magdalena Ridge Observatory Interferometer. We're beginning construction very soon, and it is the successor to the COAST telescope in Cambridge.
The advantage of interferometers is that we can have the effective aperture of 400m (so obtaining high angular resolution) without the problem of building and maintaining a distortion-free enormous mirror. Of course, we don't get the sensitivity, but we do get the resolution.
Incidentally, COAST (Cambridge Optical Aperture Synthesis Telsecope), which was built in the late '80s has a better angular resolution than Hubble (although we do have a lot of atmosphere in the way!), and has managed to sucessfully image detail on the surface of stars.
Did you notice that the announcement was made at the Vancouver Board of Trade?
The Canadian markets, especially the Vancouver one, is notorious for dodgy scams to suck in investors. Protection for investors is much less than in the States.
The gold mining companies are historically the worst but hang onto your wallet with this one too.
"John Halliday, vice-president of B.C. engineering company AMEC, which is spearheading the initiative, was at the Vancouver Board of Trade to pitch the idea Wednesday."
"'That's our Canadian contribution, the telescope structure itself and the design solution for the enclosure that will surround the telescope,' he explained."
AMEC, which has been building telescopes for 30 years, helped develop that model.
Not a bad way to get your firm a billion dollars in contracts over the next decade. Come up with an idea, get other people to pay you for it. Nice to see Capitalism thriving across the border in Canada, America's largest national park.
maybe they'll find the McDonald's on Mars.
"It's got to be a site that's meaningful from an astrological point of view, but we don't want it to be in place that's so hostile that scientists and people won't go there," Halliday said.
1. I sure hope you said astronomical, rather than astrological, or the astronomers will shoot you when they find out.
2. Places that are hostile to people are ideal for telescopes. Keck for instance, is at nearly 14,000 feet above sea level. If you want to breathe, generally you do it from a tank. The less air you have between you and the stars the better. As well, it's absolutely imperative that they operate well away from civilization because light pollution destroys the view. And finally, there's this little thing called automation. You don't really *have* to be there to take pictures anymore. The best visual telescope in the world is the one in the most hostile environment of all: in orbit. The only possible way to make it work is by automation.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
but I always get a chuckle when I hear, "Canadians plan to....."
I am not sure why.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
Don't you know that Slashdot standard sizes only come in "Libraries of Congress" for data, and "VW Bugs" for things that come from, or go up into space?
Not anymore
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Of course.
This entry is wrong! Canada is a quarter partner in what will be the world's largest telescope when it is complete in 2014. The telescope, which is in preliminary design stages will be 30 m in diameter and consist of over 700 mirror segments that will work together to create a telescope that will be capable of producing Hubble Telescope type images from Earth. A lot of groundbreaking adaptive optics work is being carried out at the National Research Council Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in Victoria, B.C. and AMEC Dynamic Structures which is designing the telescope's dome and other components. The Official Canadian Website is at http://tmt.astro.utoronto.ca
goatse.cx-o-scope?
It'll never work, because the US part will assume it's the size of a US football field, and the Canadians will assume it's larger because they use metric "yards"...
^====^
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
The Canadian 'scope won't sit for long atop the list of the world's largest telescope. In fact, Poland has already begun construction of a monstrous telescope nearly triple the size of the one planned for Canada.
The telescope is being installed where the temperature and humidity are nearly constant: several miles underground in an abandoned salt mine.
"In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al
If they want to watch NHL Hockey (owned by the U.S.)they just need to get the DirecTV Center Ice package.
The last time I checked, the Herzberg Institute was still in Canada. When did it move?
As an undergraduate, I was fortunate enough to meet Canadian Nobel Laureate Gerhard Herzberg.
to capture the full image of the lying assholes who saddled us with this fraud-based war, to enrich their cronies to the tune of dozens of billions of unaccountable dollars.
I found this news item while searching for articles about the LBT telescope in Arizona. Italians helped with the mirror technology of the LBT and are working on newer lightweight designs.
OB Fawlty Towers Quote.
The Canadians you say. I didn't think they were as clever as that.
And in other news...
http://www.gmto.org/
How bout "Ludicrously Large Telescope" for no other reason that the Spaceballs reference
.
-shpoffo
The name of the telescope is the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), as is made clear here on AMEC's page. The main public page for the project is here. In addition to AMEC, the company mentioned in the article, TMT is also a collaboration of the University of California, CalTech, and many others.
So that means they would see the Big Bang Burger Bar.
At 305 meters (1000 feet) in diameter, the radio telescope at Aricebo is still the world's largest (* with a single main surface).
(I wonder what the largest antenna array amounts to, area-wise?)
I also wonder if Aricebo couldn't be fitted out for optical imagery somehow. I expect that having a light-reflective surface could cause problems during certain times of the day (like perhaps melting part of the overhead structure when the sun hits it right). But perhaps they could engineer tiles that flip over, providing a light-reflective surface during the night, and a not-so-shiny surface for daytime use?
Aricebo info: http://www.naic.edu/public/the_telescope.htm
(Also seems like it would make a great sporting arena; perhaps in the post-apocalyptic era...)
"Although a site for the telescope has not been selected, it is hoped that preconstruction would likely begin in 2008 so that it would become operational by 2015. The plans were unveiled in Vancouver, Canada, where AMEC engineers have been working on the project."
The title of this post is totaly off base. This project has very little to do with Canada. It is primarily a collaboration between CalTech and the University of California. The plans for this have been in the works for almost a decade already, so this really isn't huge news.
I worked on an atmospheric sensing project a few months back that was loosely associated with the Thirty meter telescope through the Center for adaptive optics at UC Santa Cruz. One of postdocs from Caltech that was working with us disappeared for a few months to scout a location for this thing. Apparently they want to build it in the high deserts of South America; the reasons being the lack of rain, less atmosphere to look through, and virtually no light pollution. Keck, the huge pair of telescopes in Hawaii can only operate about half the time because of bad weather.
Fun telescope fact: Without adaptive optics (the thousands of tiny actuators behind the mirrors in big telescopes) no matter how big your lens, you will have the same effective resolution as a 10 inch telescope. This is because the air between the scope and the stars is constantly shifting. It is also why the Hubble can take super clear images despite its small size.
It is, after all, a 10 yard difference, more if you include the end zones...
Remember boys, it takes a real man to get a first down with only three downs instead of four haha...
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
now i wouldnt want to bash the editors but anyone who has read the HGTTG series knows for a fact that the "Restaurant at the End of the Universe" is a restaurant that is present at the collapse and destruction of the universe, not the outer rim. since it is a restaurant that travels through time the telescope would not find it. and if that pisses them off then hooray for corny jokes.
*peace,love and all that jazz* -Gary
The next one will be called the Astronomically Large Telescope.
- Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
But but... the proposed OWL by ESA is even bigger! It should be 100m in diameter if everything goes well ESA OWL site
The world's largest single-piece telescope is the Arecibo one. The world largest composite telescope is the VLBI project which is larger than the earth itself (I work very near one of the sites). The world's largest composite low-frequency radio telescope array will be ready in 3 years in (mostly) the Netherlands.
See also www.jive.nl (the dutch VLBI section), www.lofar.nl (low-frequency radio telescope array) and http://www.naic.edu/ (Arecibo).
Though larger than any existing optical telescope it is not as large as OWL (the large European Telescope currently in planning).
OWL has a 100m mirror - the TMT has a 30 meter one.
For more info I suggest http://www.eso.org/projects/owl/FAQs.html
next there will be the ludicrously* large telescope.
and later we will see the insanely* large telescope.
B.T.W: When does Spaceballs 2 come out, and will it be called "in search of even more money"*?
* I'm sorry. I don't know the exact english wording. I only saw it in german...
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Seems unlikely that they will see the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
The Big Band Burger Bar, maybe...
I saw the headline on the RSS Feed.
I thought the Canadians were building the worlds biggest Tele
Visions of a huge TV set came into my head.
I Feel quite disapointed after finding out it was only a telescope.
Better is the enemy of good enough. - Russian proverb.
We have to nuke Canada immediately! We must not allow there to be a telescope gap! The next thing you know, they're going to want Our Precious Bodily Fluids!
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
"... football fields are rarely 30m long ..."
100 yards < 30 meters?
... so you can't see the restaurant at the end of the universe.
If you'll remember from the book... Milliways was located at the TEMPORAL end of the universe. Since there is ostensibly not a SPATIAL end of the universe, this telescope will not help us find any two-headed galactic presidents or interstellar travel editors. Alas.
42, Don't Panic.
And where in Quebec will they be building this, Canadian
politics being what they are?
From the article...
"We plan on building the 'scope using a very large toilet paper roll and skylights from my aunt marie's home in Toronto, that is, after she finishes up with the remodeling..."
What is it with the rash of jokes being downmodded now? This is the fifth or sixth truly funny post this week that I've seen modded down.
Come on, i's *funny* (and yes, I'm Canadian.)
as we all know, having a telescope inside of Earth's atmosphere is not as good as having one in space as the effects of the atmosphere make it as though you're looking through a lense smeared with vaseline. (as I recall from that astronomy class I took)
If you're going to spend this money, why not figure out how to update/fix/improve Hubble and move on from there. You're already got the platform, is there no way to take advantage of it?
honey, having lived in texas, let me tell you. not EVERYTHING is bigger in texas. in fact some things tend to be below average if you get my drift. damn rednecks.
If it actually happens--great! I am all for advancing science. The money is better spent there than on hand-outs for welfare bums and dope addicts.
Regards, Robert Miller http://www.rocketscientists.ca/
When was the last time it was clear enough to use a telescope in Canadia?