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In Hope to Find Life on other Planets, Work on Huge Chile Telescope Begins

By Kanika Gupta | Update Date: Nov 16, 2015 02:42 PM EST

The work on one of the most advanced telescopes begins on Andean Mountaintop as the Chilean President, Michelle Bachelet, marks the beginning of its construction on Wednesday evening. This advanced telescope, known as the Giant Magellan Telescope, will help locate life on distant planets and its possibilities. The work has commenced on this new project that is scheduled to conclude by 2024. This telescope will have a high resolution, at least 10 times that of the Hubble Spacecraft. According to the experts that are working on this telescope, it will not only be able to observe the black hole in its finest detail, it will also be able to identify planets that belong to other solar systems, reports Reuters.

The astronomers believe that such advamced technology will aide humans in identifying what led to the formation of the universe and if other planets that are located at least a hundred of light years away are capable of supporting life. Bachelet, at the site of GMT said, "With this science, there are no limits to the possibilities that are open. What it does is open the door to understanding," she said, as reported by Reuters.

The GMT is a project that is a result of collaboration between institutions in United States, South Korea, Brazil, Chile and Australia, will work on seven delicately curved lenses that are each at least 28 feet wide. For this mechanism to work efficiently, not more than one lens can have blemish higher than 25 nanometers, which is more than 4000 times smaller than the average width of a human strand of hair. Yuri Beletsky, Belarussian astronomer working on GMT said, "Astronomy is like archaeology; what we see in the sky happened many years ago. The biggest expectation is that we find something that we don't expect," he said, reports Reuters.

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