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The Atacama Desert in northern Chile.

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This desert, with its high mountains, plateaux, and active volcanoes, is probably the driest place on Earth.

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This inhospitable terrain is where ESO, together with international partners, 

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is building the world’s largest astronomical project.

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The first of 66 state-of-the-art antennas has just been handed over to the project.

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This is the ESOcast!

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Cutting-edge science and life behind the scenes of ESO, the European Southern Observatory.

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Exploring the far reaches of the Universe with our host Dr J, a.k.a. Dr Joe Liske.

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Hello and welcome to the ESOcast.

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In today’s episode, we’re going to travel to the site of ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array.

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This amazing new telescope is being built right now, in the Chilean Andes, at an altitude of 5000 metres.

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High enough to be literally breathtaking!

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ALMA will initially comprise 66 high-precision antennas, with the option to expand in the future.

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There will be an array of fifty 12-metre antennas, acting together as a single giant telescope,

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and a compact array composed of 7-metre and 12-metre diameter antennas.

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The first 12-metre diameter antenna, built by Mitsubishi Electric Corporation

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for the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, one of the ALMA partners, has just been handed over to the observatory.

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It will shortly be joined by North American and European antennas.

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Each new antenna must meet very strict requirements.

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The surface of each dish must be accurate to the thickness of a human hair,

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and the pointing must be precise enough to pick out a golf ball at a distance of 15 kilometres.

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This antenna handover is a major milestone.

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The observatory team can now proceed to integrate the rest of the components,

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including the sensitive receivers that will collect the faint signals from space.

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The antennas are tested at the Operations Support Facility, at an altitude of 2900 metres,

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before being moved to the plateau of Chajnantor at 5000 metres.

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The Operations Support Facility will also be the centre of the observatory’s scientific activities.

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The ALMA site was chosen because its extreme dryness and altitude offer excellent conditions

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for observing the submillimetre radio waves for which ALMA was designed.

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What’s more, the wide plateau at Chajnantor offers plenty of space for the array of antennas.

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The individual dishes will be spread out and linked together over distances of more than 16 kilometres.

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The ALMA antennas must withstand the harsh conditions at Chajnantor,

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with strong winds, cold temperatures and a thin atmosphere with half as much oxygen as at sea level.

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This forbidding environment also poses challenges for the workers building ALMA.

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Although each of the antennas weighs about 100 tonnes, 

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they can be moved individually to different positions in order to reconfigure the ALMA telescope.

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Now this will be carried out by two custom-designed transporters.

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Each of these giant vehicles is 10 metres wide, 20 metres long and has 28 wheels!

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Now that’s what I call a monster truck!

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With ALMA, astronomers will observe the cool Universe:

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the molecular gas and the tiny dust grains that constitute the building blocks of planetary systems,

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stars, galaxies and even of life itself.

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ALMA will provide us with new and much needed insight into the formation of stars and planets,

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and it will reveal distant galaxies in the early Universe, which we see as they were over ten billion years ago.

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I’m Dr J signing off for the ESOcast.

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Join me again next time for another adventure in the far reaches of the Universe.

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And now I really need some oxygen!

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ESOcast is produced by ESO, the European Southern Observatory. www.eso.org

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ESO, the European Southern Observatory, is the pre-eminent intergovernmental science and technology organisation in astronomy

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designing, constructing and operating the world's most advanced ground-based telescopes.

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Transcription by ESO ; translation by —