World's Most Powerful Telescope Begins Search For Origin of the Universe

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."

Comments

Undersells ALMAs capabilities

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[durrr]

So approximately how many megapixels?

Re:Undersells ALMAs capabilities

[Mikachu]

1.21 Gigapixels

Wow, at that resolution, you can practically see back in time...

Re:Undersells ALMAs capabilities

[laejoh]

42?

Re:Undersells ALMAs capabilities

[AP31R0N]

Why are you asking us if it is 42?

Units

[Anonymous Coward]

How large is a "large millimeter"?

Re:Units

[snowraver1]

It's actually exactly an inch. The Americans were tired of being hassled for not using SI units, so they just renamed them.

Re:Units

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

About the same as a wee smoot.

Re:Units

[ZankerH]

It's (Atacama (large (millimetre array))), not (Atacama (large (millimetre)) array).

S-expressions: They're superior to natural grammar.

Re:Units

[sznupi]

You're still on a website which uses... the more international format of date :p (for example, that "11/10/03" in the URL means third day of tenth month)

Re:Units

[balbord]

If you could care less why don't you? Budget restrictions?

just sayin'

Re:Units

[St.Creed]

You (are (totally correct))

Re:Units

[arth1]

That's the emacs lisp explanation.
The vi explanation is :s/e/e -/

Re:Units

[frisket]

It's like the difference between standard printers' points (72.27 to the inch) and Adobe's "large points" (72 to the inch).

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)

Re:People are starving!

[snowraver1]

You have a nurse at work? Do you work in the healthcare industry? Are you Dr. Bob? Maybe you just need to have your subluxations released.

humph.. telescope...

[Anonymous Coward]

ya'll don't need no fancy-schmancy teley-scope to see the church on the corner

Re:humph.. telescope...

[wierd_w]

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.

Re:humph.. telescope...

[quenda]

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!

Re:humph.. telescope...

[Genda]

You do if you want to find more than 3 grams of collective brain tissue... Its a church of

Re:humph.. telescope...

[wwphx]

My wife operates a 3.5 meter telescope, fortunately a ridge blocks most of the town below, but not the air force base next door, for some reason they like to keep the lights on for their runways. She has some strong opinions about city light and Las Vegas. The funny thing is: she was invited as a guest to a convention in Vegas and we went! It was kind of amusing watching her cringe and bitch.

If my interpretation of the bible is correct, Jesus may well appear at Landover Ministries, and utterly lay waste to it with a sword when he returns. At least that's my fervent desire. Speaking as a fellow heathen.

Irrelevant comparison

[vlm]

it will have a resolving power far greater than Hubble,

Didn't know they operate in the same frequency band.

Re:Irrelevant comparison

[nashv]

They don't have to. The article is obviously talking about spatial resolution.

Re:Irrelevant comparison

[vlm]

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.

Re:Irrelevant comparison

[nashv]

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 Hubble in the visible spectrum, may now be seen by ALMA to be two galaxies in its mm-wavelength , because it has better resolution. This is not apples and oranges if you're looking at the same galaxies in different frequency bands.

Not comparable

[kelemvor4]

Why is this being compared to hubble? Hubble records information in 390 to 750 nm while alma records 0.3 to 9.6 mm. I'm not saying it's not valuable, just that the comparison was a poor choice.

Re:Not comparable

[Teun]

The comparison was not about the colours (wavelength or frequency) but about the observable resolution.

In other words, this radio telescope will be able to discern details the Hubble cannot see.

Re:Not comparable

[rubycodez]

meaningless. "My sonar can discern details my eye's can't. My eyes can discern details my sonar can't." it's rubbish. The Hubble can discern details in the visible spectrum that the microwave array cannot see.

Re:Not comparable

[nashv]

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 resolution better.

What looks like one galaxy to the Hubble in the visible spectrum, may now be seen by ALMA to be two galaxies in its mm-wavelength , becauseit has better resolution.

You can stop harping about the summary now

.

ESO

[Anonymous Coward]

ESO means European Southern Observatory not European Space Observatory!

Time Lapse Video

[guttentag]

If anyone remembers the awesome time lapse video of the ESO's VLT at Paranal, here's a downloadable time lapse video of this telescope by the same guy. FYI: the VLT is at an altitude of about 2600m, this one is at about 5000m.

Not just ESO

[dvase]

Small correction to the summary, ESO is not the only organization operating ALMA. It is an international partnership of Europe, North America and East Asia in cooperation with the Republic of Chile.

Re:Not just ESO

[Bloody Peasant]

Correct. The original two partner institutions were

• The National Radio Astronomy Observatory, which operates the North American ALMA Science Center, a regional ALMA Research Center (ARC);
• The European Southern Observatory which similarly operates the European ARC.

Later, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan 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 mostly just amazing :)

Re:Millimeter? Isn't that the communist way measur

[Oswald McWeany]

God is French- why would he save the imperial measurement system?

What about the VLBA?

[Daetrin]

What definitions are being used to declare this the "largest astronomical installation in the world" as opposed to the VLBA? The VLBA claims to be the "world's largest, full-time astronomical instrument." I can't seem to find exact info on ALMA's baseline, but i doubt it exceeds 8611 km.

Re:What about the VLBA?

[Pausanias]

They mean biggest in terms of light collecting power, not baseline.

Re:What about the VLBA?

[RogerWilco]

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

But yeah, there are multiple ways to claim the title "Largest Telescope". Things get really funny with VLBI and space based VLBI.

Fry: Did you build the Smellescope?

[synapse7]

Farnsworth: No, I remembered that I'd built one last year.

Alma

[Anonymous Coward]

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).

Re:Alma

[AP31R0N]

"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

[russotto]

Except it's probably goatse for the universe.

Bandwidth and GPU needed?

[G3ckoG33k]

Seriously, that is highend.

Re:Bandwidth and GPU needed?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Will-They-See-The-Origin-of-the-World?

[G3ckoG33k]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Origin-of-the-World.jpg

Center of the universe = beginning?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Center of the universe = beginning?

[expatriot]

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.

Re:Center of the universe = beginning?

[Relic of the Future]

Yup. Think of it like you're an ant on the surface of an expanding balloon. There is no "center" to the _surface_ of the balloon. Every point on the balloon is moving away from every other point on the balloon, and the further apart two points are, the faster they are moving apart. The "surface" of the universe is 3D though. (Read Flatland, then Sphereland.)

Re:Center of the universe = beginning?

[AP31R0N]

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 directions the marble at the center would still be in the center. Seems that either the singularity was infinitely large or there would be some epicenter for the explosion.

When the balloon surface is flat you can mark the center, looking from the top down, as it inflates all the other points would be moving away from that even as the outer points move away from each other.

Re:Center of the universe = beginning?

[Relic of the Future]

Nope. There is no center, or rather, every point appears to be equivalently central. You can't mark the "center" of the surface of a sphere; that's meaningless. Sure, you can mark the center of the sphere, but the center of the sphere is not a part of the surface of the sphere. If the universe is the surface, then the center is not a part of the universe. From within the universe, the center does not exist. And sure, you could mark any point on the sphere and call it "the center", and every other point on the sphere would move away as the sphere expanded... but the point of view from every other point on the sphere is exactly the same as for the point you picked; none of them are central. You have to read Flatland (it's free; that was a project Gutenberg link!) so you can start to break out of your exclusively-3D thinking.

Re:Center of the universe = beginning?

[AP31R0N]

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.

Re:People are starving!

[CelticWhisper]

Apparently I fail at parody.

Alma

[jonathancarter]

My friend's mother's name is Alma. I feel some good "yo mamma" jokes brewing here :)