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by Simran Jayasinghe In the middle of the Atacama Desert in Chile, 16,500 ft above sea level, the Atacama Observatory houses the most powerful radio telescope on Earth. ALMA, which stands for Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, is the result of an international partnership between the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO), the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Republic of Chile, took 10 years to build, and cost approximately $1.4 billion. ALMA is made up of 66 individual radio telescopes that are controlled by the ALMA Main Array Correlator and the Atacama Compact Array Correlator. The correlators control all 66 antennae, and combine their observations to let scientists see the observations of the full ALMA telescope. This takes a huge amount of computer-power; the correlator needs an entire air-conditioned floor to keep it cool! Why the Atacama Desert? Since ALMA is very powerful and has sensitive sensors, there weren’t many places it could have been built. It needed to be at place that was dry and was at an altitude high enough to not have interference from moisture in the air. ALMA’s current location meets these requirements, being about 16,500 ft (5,000 meters) above sea level and in a location that gets almost no rainfall. What has ALMA done? ALMA has led to observations about comet activity, star life cycles and behavior, planetary formation, the formations of galaxies, and recently aided in getting the first image of a black hole in our galaxy!  First image of the black hole Sgr A* in the center of our galaxy! (image from almaobservatory.org) For the full press release regarding the first image of the black hole in our galaxy, click here. Sources: almaobservatory.org
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by Simran Jayasinghe
The project ITER, which stands for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, is a joint effort by 35 countries to make a clean and sustainable energy source that was started in 1998. ITER's goal is to eventually replicate the process that the sun uses to create energy, by making a nuclear fusion reactor. By some estimations, it is the most expensive science experiment on Earth, but if it eventually worked, it could solve all of our energy problems. The reactor would run on only lithium and seawater, and model reactors based off of ITER could potentially generate power with virtually no pollution. This project is not likely to be close to being completed in the next couple decades, but is an essential research avenue. If we had a tool to help solve pollution problems while simultaneously increasing the amount of energy we can make, we could support humanity's energy needs for millions of years to come, while also restoring our planet. Sources + Resources to check out: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/03/03/a-star-in-a-bottle https://www.iter.org/proj/inafewlines |