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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."
$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!
I heard the optics will be coated in maple syrup.
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
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.
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.
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
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
RETURN without GOSUB in line 1050
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 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.
While the rest of your comment is spot on, it's not actually going to be placed in Canada. They're testing possible sites in Hawaii, Mexico and Chile.
It's a Canadian project with international support. The fact that the U.S. Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics among others are supporting this is because these Canadians have come up with something way beyond the state of the art and demonstrated to the satisfaction of the worlds most knowledgable that they will indeed be able to pull it off.
In my opinion, this makes the spiteful little jabs that are sprouting up in this discussion are very easy to dismiss.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
This article is so full of mistakes it's not even funny! To clarify, www.amec.com is a British company, on the same scale as Bechtel or Fleur in the US.
The hertzberg institute is a canadian research institute, not american. The telescope is being build as a partnership between Hertzberg and Caltech. Read more here: http://www.tmt.org/
"Entropy is the bad-guy, and he is everywhere"