A telescope arms race is taking shape around the world. Astronomers are drawing up plans for the biggest, most powerful instruments ever constructed, capable of peering far deeper into the universe — and further back in time — than ever before.
A joint Mexico-U.S. effort to build a monster radio telescope in Mexico is causing concerns because the project, the Large Millimeter Telescope, is part of a U.S. Defense Department effort to develop the target acquisition and directed-energy technology needed for anti-satellite warfare.
Astronomers have demonstrated the use of internet technologies and the principle of interferometry to create a giant "virtual telescope" that has a resolution 5 times that of the Hubble Space Telescope.
An international group of scientists from has been working on an ambitious project whose goal is to simulate on a supercomputer the evolution of the entire universe, from just after the Big Bang until the present.
Recent astronomical measurements, scientists say, cannot rule out the possibility that in a few billion years a mysterious force permeating space-time will be strong enough to blow everything apart, shred rocks, animals, molecules and finally even atoms in a last seemingly mad instant of cosmic self-abnegation.
Scientists have long been stumped about the origins of high-energy cosmic rays. They hope a new observatory will substantiate one of several theories on how the rays came into being, and shed light on the origins of the universe.
Cosmologists debate the anthropic principle and the existence of multiple universes at a recent conference.
Detection technologies developed to search for black holes and supernovae in space have a new down-to-earth application ? helping to fight terrorism. The same technologies used to study astrophysics phenomena at the edge of the universe are also being adapted to search for faint radiation emissions from nuclear materials or nuclear devices.
Astronomers, schoolchildren and interested amateurs could soon be watching the sky with the help of a network of telescopes controlled via the internet.
Astronomers could be among the first to reap the rewards of plans to turn the internet into a vast pool of computer processing power. The three-year Astrogrid project is attempting to give astronomers a common way of accessing and manipulating diverse data archives.