Harvard helps fund a $1 billion telescope
The Giant Magellan Telescope, the most powerful instrument of its kind, will begin operation in 2021.
Harvard University is helping fund a $1 billion telescope considered to be a “game-changer’’ for astronomers, reports The Boston Globe.
Scientists celebrated the ground-breaking for the Giant Magellan Telescope Wednesday. The Giant Magellan Telescope Organization says $500 million has already been raised for the telescope, which will be the most powerful instrument of its kind, reports the Globe.
The telescope, scheduled to begin operation in 2021, will help scientists study planets in other solar systems.
“One of the greatest questions in all of science is whether or not we are alone in the universe, whether there’s life outside the solar system,’’ David Charbonneau, a professor at Harvard University and researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told the Globe. “The GMT is the first observatory that is actually big enough to do that.’’
Read the full story in the Globe.
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