Announcement

ESOcast 135: Why Astronomers Want to Use ALMA — ALMA is a Time Machine!

2 November 2017

What happened at the beginning of the Universe? It’s a question astronomers have pondered for a long time. Whilst we can’t actually travel back in time, astronomers are able to see into the past and observe galaxies and stars that were made when our Universe was still very young. Because light travels at a finite speed, the further away an object is, the longer its light has taken to reach us — so we see distant objects as they were in the past. To see the most distant celestial objects astronomers use some of the world’s most advanced telescopes, many of them unique — like ALMA.

ESOcast 135 describes how ALMA enables astronomers see into the past and learn more about what our Universe was like when it was young.

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