By Iñaki Martinez Azpiro |
Atacama (Chile), (EFE). The ALMA radio telescope, the largest in the world and located at an altitude of 5,000 meters in the Atacama Desert (Chile), celebrated its tenth anniversary, a time in which it has revealed many secrets of the sky, such as the first photograph of a hole black.
In an arid brown-colored plateau, surrounded by rocky peaks, dozens of white metallic giants break the landscape and move their enormous circular heads in different directions in the sky: they are the 66 antennas of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) that make up the widest telescope in the world.
In its first decade of observations, ALMA has advanced, for example, in the knowledge about the creation of new planets, the origin of life in other parts of the universe or supermassive black holes.
“We can place the antennas in different positions, so that we can enlarge the telescope or make it more compact according to scientific needs. If we move them away from each other, we obtain more detail, but less amplitude in the image, and vice versa, as with a camera zoom,” the observatory’s communications coordinator, Nicolás Lira, explained to EFE.
The signals from the antennas that make up ALMA are put together by a supercomputer, which applies mathematical models to obtain a single combined image of all of them.
Historical ALMA discoveries
ALMA is possible thanks to the joint work of some twenty countries -among them the United States, Europe, Japan or Chile-, a collaboration that also occurs between several large observatories located in different parts of the planet and that makes it possible to reach unique astronomical discoveries .
“ALMA often works with other observatories across the planet, connecting their signals to create a huge telescope the size of Earth,” the head of ALMA’s Science Department, Elizabeth Humphreys, told EFE.
This is how, for example, the first photograph ever taken of a black hole was achieved, combining the signals from different observatories on the planet and creating the equivalent of a telescope thousands of kilometers in diameter using the same technique with which ALMA combines the signals of their antennae, known as interferometry.
Observing a black hole from Earth “is equivalent to looking from Spain at the hole of a conventional pen located in Chile,” one of the ALMA astronomers, Hugo Messias, remarked to EFE.
“The Chemistry of Life”
ALMA was a revolution for astronomy a decade ago, but the scientific community is already working on larger telescopes that expand the frontiers of knowledge that the Chilean observatory itself was able to cross.
“Science is not black or white, but progresses bit by bit. There is always something beyond what we know, and human curiosity is practically infinite. Human curiosity does not end with ALMA”, expressed Lira.
However, ALMA is preparing a profound renovation of its systems for 2030: it will replace its supercomputer and several components of its antennas, to speed up the work of the observatory and increase the clarity of the data it obtains.
One of the strengths of the Chilean observatory is its ability to capture chemical components in the universe, Humphreys reported, and improvements in the machinery will increase that potential.
“What we want to find is more information about the chemistry of life, about which of the systems we see in space may have some form of life,” the scientist announced.
But if science is characterized by something, it is by delving into the unknown: “What do I want ALMA to find in the coming years? I look for surprises. We collect data from many projects, and sometimes we don’t know what will come out of them. I love surprises, when you discover something you never would have imagined. That -Humphreys concluded- is what I want from ALMA in the future”.