Big Science: Thirty Meter Telescopes

Ground has been broken for the world's largest telescope, but funding to complete the project is still in doubt.

This season, Quirks & Quarks producer Jim Lebans is looking into Big Science projects - the large, expensive, and sometimes risky efforts to push the boundaries of science. This week, we're looking at the Thirty Meter Telescope project, which is a 1.4-billion-dollar project to build a telescope that is three times the diameter of the largest telescopes today. The TMT will have huge light-gathering capacity that should make it possible to see the first stars, directly image planets around other stars, and much more. Canada has been part of the TMT project since the beginning, and Dr. Ray Carlberg, an astronomer at the University of Toronto, is Canadian Project Director for the TMT. The project involves five partners, the US, Japan, China, Japan and Canada. Canada's share of the costs of the project is 300 million dollars, but the federal government has yet to commit the money and deadlines are looming.

Related Links

• Canada and the Thirty Meter Telescope
• The Thirty Meter Telescope site
• Globe & Mail story on TMT funding in Canada
• Sky & Telescope story on groundbreaking