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| Amec Will Help Determine New Things about the Universe Amec, the international project management and engineering company, is near completion of one of the world's most sophisticated and sensitive telescopes. The Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) will look back in time to study how the universe has evolved since the 'Big Bang'. Testing of the telescope will occur throughout May in Canada; once successfully completed, ACT will be shipped to the Atacama Desert region in Chile. Designed to scan a patch of sky millions of times, ACT will detect faint microwaves and then provide a series of images that will be used to show how the structure of the universe has evolved. As more distant microwaves are detected, researchers are able to, in effect, peer back in time. ACT's 6.4 meter reflector makes it one of the world's largest millimeter-wave telescopes. ACT will be sited in Atacama Desert's Cerro Toco mountains at an altitude of 5,200 meters. The region's high winds and extreme temperature swings presented unique design challenges. The telescope will be protected by a massive bowl-shaped shield; the entire structure is 12.2 meters in height. Funded by the National Science Foundation in the United States, ACT is a collaboration between Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, NASA, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, astrophysics research group INOAE in Mexico, and the universities of Haverford, Columbia, Massachusetts, York College, Rutgers in the U.S.; Toronto and British Columbia in Canada; Universidad la Catolica in Chile; Cardiff in the UK and KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. Amec is an international leader in the building of telescopes. It has begun working on the design for the world's largest telescope, the Thirty-Metre Telescope. With the mirror the size of a football field, it will be housed in a stadium-sized observatory. The project, scheduled for completion in 2015, will provide astronomers with clearer views than any other ground-based optical telescope. write your comments about the article :: © 2006 Construction News :: home page |