Yesterday, the Chilean national football team . Today, a similarly destructive fate awaits the peak of a Chilean mountain鈥攁nd, like the World Cup, , starting at 12:30 EST.
The top of Chile’s Cerro Armazones (elevation 9,482 feet) will be blasted off to make room for the largest optical and infrared telescope in the world.聽
罢丑别听聽(E-ELT) will be constructed on the resulting plateau. , the E-ELT will take a decade to build and is scheduled for completion in 2024, at which time astronomers will point it toward planets in other solar systems.
“We want to study the atmospheres of planets that are just the right distance from their stars that life might form on their surfaces,” says astronomer Joe Liske. “The goal is to try to say whether life might exist on some of these planets.”