GIANT TELESCOPE

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 968, 10 May 1930, Page 30

GIANT TELESCOPE

INSTRUMENT TO COST £1,200,000 CONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA A 200-inch telescope, estimated to cost £1,200,000, and quadrupling the distance man may peer into space, is being constructed in a Massachusetts laboratory. Dr. Elihu Thompson, who is in charge of the work, which began a year ago, lias had to admit failure of two attempts to make a smooth glass j surface big enough for the reflector. , A laboratory assistant suggested J something like the modern method of 1 spraying paint on an automobile. The J plan worked. The quartz was ground | into a white powder, resembling flour, i and then run through a roa.ring blow | torch at a heat of 3,000 degrees upon the mirrow backing. Hydrogen sufficient to lift a Zeppelin was utilised in the spraying. Two-foot mirrors are the largest thus far made by the hot glass sleet. Dr. Thompson hopes to produce a 60in. mirror during the next few months, and will then prepare for the 200 in. size, with one intermediate step. The astronomers at Mount Wilson, -wherethe 108 in reflector is in use, have i made favourable comment on the smaller discs already turned out. AMAZING LIMITS The International Board of Education is financing the telescope for the California Institute of Technology, and the General Electric Company, of which Dr. Thompson is an official, is contributing the mirror work at cost. Although only twice the diameter of the present largest telescope, the new mirror will collect four times as much light, and is expected to “see” that much farther. The present limit is the distance light travels in 150.000,000 years. The new telescope may look far enough beyond to reach the mysterious limit of some sort required by the Einstein theory of relativity. Astronomers do not expect to find the kind of tangible limit that can be seen or photographed. Instead, they hope that the greater power of visibility, near and far. may help to discover more about the nature of ! the "curved space-time” that Einstein ; postulated. They are confident it ] will show a lot of other things.