The main part of the world's most powerful and largest radio observatory was inaugurated in mid-March in the world's coldest desert at an altitude of 5,000 meters in northern Chile. Located in the super-arid Atacama Desert, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array — known as ALMA — consists of 66 state-of-the-art radio telescopes spread over an area of 16 sq. km.
Japan, the United States and leading European countries have spent some ¥100 billion on the project, with Japan shouldering ¥30 billion of the cost. In the course of carrying out the project, a tragedy happened: Professor Koichiro Morita, who took part in designing 16 ALMA telescopes, was murdered during a robbery in his apartment in Santiago last May. It is hoped that ALMA will make great contributions to enhancing human knowledge of the birth and evolution of the universe.
The 66 radio telescope forming ALMA are 54 parabola antennas, each having a diameter of 12 meters, and 12 parabola antennas, each seven meters across. By spreading these telescopes to a distance of up to 20 km, it is possible to get the observation data as if they were from a radio telescope with a diameter of up to 20 km.
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