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Massive Construction Effort Begins For World's Largest Telescope
An anonymous reader writes with this selection from a press release issued by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics: "Astronomers have begun to blast 3 million cubic feet of rock from a mountaintop in the Chilean Andes to make room for what will be the world's largest telescope when completed near the end of the decade. The telescope will be located at the Carnegie Institution's Las Campanas Observatory-one of the world's premier astronomical sites, known for its pristine conditions and clear, dark skies. Over the next few months, more than 70 controlled blasts will break up the rock while leaving a solid bedrock foundation for the telescope and its precision scientific instruments."
Astronomers have begun to blast 3 million cubic feet of rock
I think you'll find that the people blasting rock aren't astronomers...
I spent five minutes stealing cool sigs and all I got was this.
Besides knowing the depths of the space, they are also construction workers.
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And here's me thinking they were going to blow stuff up at random in the hope a telescope would come out of it.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
As we have learned from Mythbusters, it just isn't science unless you blow something up at some point!
There's the Very Large Optical Telescope, then there's the Overwhelmingly Large Telescope and the European Extremely Large Telescope. What's next? Ridiculously Large Telescope?