Horizon (1964–…): Season 48, Episode 2 - Seeing Stars - full transcript
Out there, hidden from the naked eye,
is a universe we barely understand.
There are stars being born,
black holes,
perhaps even new forms of life...
But now, astronomers are able to see
the cosmos as never before.
They are creating a new breed
of super-telescope
of unprecedented power and clarity.
We have, at our disposal,
tools that have never existed
before in the history of mankind.
We're the first ones to get
to look at this,
you know you don't actually realise
how special a time this is.
This revolution in
telescope construction
promises a new age of discovery.
Right now is an extremely exciting
time to be an astronomer,
to be an engineer
building telescopes, because
the questions keep multiplying.
The answers keep coming too,
but the questions come even
faster than the answers.
Engines start at 7.15,
we'll taxi out at 7.25.
At the ends of the Earth,
astronomers are trying to capture
light that has travelled from the
farthest reaches of space.
So we're taking it
to the Chajnantor Plateau.
The air density's about
50% of that at sea level.
So gloves on, hat on,
oxygen happening...
more or less ready
for the Chilean desert.
Together, they are reinventing what
a telescope is and what it can do.
And they are rewriting
the story of the universe.
The Atacama Desert, Chile.
Hardly any vegetation,
moisture or life.
Mountains here have received
no rain in living memory.
They reach up over one and a half
miles into dry, cloudless skies.
Throughout history only death
awaited those who ventured here.
Until now...
This is La Residencia.
But this is no luxury hotel...
and the people here
no ordinary tourists.
This is the desert home
from home for astronomers
hunting for the most mysterious
and elusive objects in the Universe.
It's very exciting to be out
here in the desert, and what
we are actually doing here is,
we are looking for a very
particular object in our own galaxy,
we're looking for a black hole.
To locate this black hole,
astronomers will be using
one of the most
powerful telescopes ever built...
..the VLT - the very large telescope.
This, quite simply, is the most
advanced optical instrument
ever constructed.
The VLT is made up
of four main telescopes.
Each contains identical glass
ceramic mirrors -
the largest ever manufactured.
This is what it takes
to spot a black hole.
But it's not going to be easy,
even with the VLT.
A black hole...
the dense remains of a dead star...
has such a strong gravitational pull
that nothing can escape...
even light.
A black hole
collects all the light
so from a
certain distance from the black hole
no light can escape any more,
so in that sense you cannot observe
a black hole, because it's black.
To locate it,
astronomers will be searching for
clues in infrared light...
light which lies just outside
the visible part of the spectrum.
It is why the VLT is in the Atacama.
You need the most advanced
facilities to observe this
and to do so, um, you
need also very certain sites
that are dry for example
and so this desert here
is just the perfect place
for such research.
Dry air is vital...
atmospheric moisture filters out
infrared light coming from space.
By building their telescope above
the clouds on a desert mountain top,
astronomers hope
for the clearest possible view.
It's now late afternoon.
Inside the four telescopes,
engineers are preparing
for the coming night's observations.
These 23-ton mirrors
are fully automated...
and will be programmed in advance.
This 530 square-foot surface
can observe objects
four billion times fainter than can
be seen with the naked eye...
ideal for finding
a distant black hole...
As the engineering shift ends, the
black hole hunters' shift begins.
Gunther and his colleague Andreas
will be working through to dawn.
To find the black hole,
they need still, clear dry skies...
and this
appears to be the perfect spot.
These are the clearest skies
on Earth.
Here tens of thousands of stars
can be seen twinkling overhead.
But if you're looking for a black
hole this represents a problem...
Because in space,
stars don't twinkle...
To find the black hole,
the astronomers in the control room
have to get rid of this distortion.
So what we see here is a stellar
image and we see it
hopping back and forth,
and that is because the light
from the star, comes to us,
through the atmosphere of the Earth.
And we would like to ideally
get rid entirely of this motion.
Here at the VLT, engineers have
devised a way of doing this.
In the heart of the telescope
they prepare to create a
star of their own.
It will be used to calculate how
atmospheric distortion
affects the view of space.
A laser
is fired into the upper atmosphere.
It interacts with sodium atoms,
creating an artificial star
60 miles above the desert.
The ever-shifting image
of the artificial star
is used to constantly correct the
telescope optics
to create a stable
view through the moving atmosphere.
Back in the control room,
the black-hole hunters
are still hard at work.
Theirs is a world
fuelled by strong coffee.
Yes, to be here at, 4.30 local time,
in the morning, is very exciting.
Er, because, um, this is what
it is about to be an astronomer.
We are sitting here looking at the
phenomenon we are interested in
and of course you have to go home to
analyse your data,
and to interpret the data.
And to try to understand
what is going on.
But beyond that, you know,
you simply see the phenomena.
And that is what
all the excitement is about.
It might look like any other office,
but here they're closing in on one
of the most powerful
and elusive objects in space.
So here we have an image of the
central region of the galaxy,
and it's actually taken
in the infrared, its size
is about 300 by 100 light years.
The stellar density is highest here,
this is where the heart of the
Milky Way is located,
that's what we're interested in, and
we can now zoom into this region,
and this is actually a slice
taken at the centre of the galaxy.
Over here you see a small cluster
of high velocity stars,
they are orbiting this spot here.
These orbiting stars emit
vast quantities of gas.
And it's the behaviour of this gas
that holds the key to the
location of the black hole.
If we have a massive black hole and
gas coming towards it, it's going to
be accreted around the black hole
and may form a so-called
accretion disk.
So this is then hot gas
orbiting the massive black hole.
So the light coming from that
region, tell to us astronomers this
actually here,
at the centre of the Milky Way,
this object is the location
of a massive black hole.
It's a clever piece
of detective work.
This insignificant-looking dot
pinpoints the supermassive black hole
at the very heart of our own galaxy.
It might not look like much
but these few pixels
in reality cover an area
about 27 million miles across.
The black hole they orbit
is thought to be four million
times heavier than our own Sun.
Well, studying black holes and doing
astro physics, brings you basically
to the limits of understanding.
It brings you to the limits
of how we can describe the
world that we're living in.
So in the process of understanding
our world, telescopes
are very important,
because they basically represent
the eyes with which we look
at the universe.
It's 7am, and the astronomers
head down the mountain.
The power and optical resolution
of these new supertelescopes
are revealing a previously
invisible universe.
How many cups of coffee do you think
you drank last night?
Um, indeed when one stays up so
long, uh, one has to maintain your
concentration
and so coffee is a good way
to do so, so I had four or five
cups of strong coffee.
First of all, I'm very happy
because, uh, not only
the weather was very good now, but
we also could see the black hole.
That was a very successful night,
yes. It was exactly what we wanted.
Tired, Andreas?
Yeah. I'm actually tired.
So, I'm looking forward to having
this breakfast and then go to bed.
Few people come off shift having
seen the supermassive black hole
at the centre of our galaxy.
Just over a decade ago
such observations would
have been impossible as telescopes
like the VLT simply didn't exist.
At 8,600 feet
on top of this desert mountain
the VLT can capture vast amounts
of infrared light from space.
But not all of it.
The atmosphere filters out the rest,
even up here in this dry air.
To capture this missing light,
astronomers have to get their
telescopes higher
than this mountain top.
Much higher.
Palmdale, California.
If it's altitude you're after,
there are few better place to come
than here.
Flight 58. Another ten-hour jaunt
Northwestern United States tonight.
It's the beginning of a long
night for astronomer
Professor Terry Herter.
Engines start at 7.15.
We'll taxi out at 7.25 and take-off
is planned for 7.45
and we'll land
at approximately 6am.
Aircraft status? Good, it's fuelled.
We do have the crew oxygen issue,
but it's been checked.
Tonight, Terry and his team
will be trying to look inside
distant nebulae...
the cosmic dust clouds
where stars are born and die.
OK, so we're going to start with an
old friend we've already observed
this on a couple of flights.
This is Frosty Leo. This is a
nebula in the Constellation Leo.
It's known as a
Frosty Leo as it's got
ice lines at 43 and 63 microns.
To see into these mysterious places,
the team will be hunting
for infrared light.
Unlike visible light,
infrared can escape the dust
that shrouds a nebula.
But to capture this light
requires a most unusual telescope.
Meet SOFIA.
Suffice to say,
this is no ordinary jumbo jet.
This plane has been given
a one billion-dollar makeover.
What began as a conventional airliner
is now the world's largest mobile
astronomical observatory, with an
infrared telescope beneath the bulge.
That's all I got. Let's go!
Thank you.
It's now late afternoon.
This is only the third major research
observation flight for the team.
This is the first ever mission
to be filmed for television.
On board, technicians are
completing their preparations.
To capture the faintest infrared
light they have to overcome
a significant challenge.
They have to stop the telescope
from observing itself.
When you operate in the
infrared part of the spectrum,
everything around you emits light.
And for our instrument to detect
light from space,
we have to prevent
it from basically seeing itself.
It emits light
itself if it isn't very cold.
So essentially the colder something
is, the less light it emits.
By super-cooling the telescope,
the technicians will prevent it
from blurring its own images.
They are making it about as cold
as is scientifically possible.
Our instrument
is actually being cooled down
to a temperature just four degrees
above absolute zero,
about minus 273
degrees centigrade. Very, very cold.
With the telescope now cryogenically
cooled, the team are
getting close to take-off.
For Terry, it's a unique role - no
other observatory like this exists.
Airborne observing is rather unique.
It's hard to explain quite how
different it is to an astronomer
who's never been in this,
been in this seat.
You don't want to waste any time,
we're in the air burning fuel, you
want to be as efficient as you can.
It's sort of funny, I don't get
to worry about what goes right
usually, I'm worried about what's
going wrong and how can I fix it.
By 7pm SOFIA is ready for take-off.
For the next 11 hours the team will
be flying an arc-shaped course
as their celestial targets move
across the sky with Earth's rotation.
'Three, two, one...'
'NASA 747 heavy contact Los Angeles,
127.1. You have a good flight!'
This mission is taking SOFIA far
higher than jumbo jets usually fly.
SOFIA and her 17 ton-telescope is
heading for the stratosphere.
132.6.
Here, nearly eight miles
above the planet,
she will be above 99% of the
water and gases in the atmosphere.
At this altitude, the star hunters
can make infrared observations
which are impossible
for ground-based telescopes.
This is, er, what shall I say?
This is eye candy
for scientists
that we're dealing with.
Tonight, the team are searching for
infrared light telling the story of
the origin and destiny of stars.
So we're actually looking at the
case where a star is dying,
and throwing out stuff away
from it. And so we're looking at
the...what's called an outflow,
or the dying stage of a star.
It's crucial research.
The way stars die will influence
those born in their place.
The dots we're seeing on the screen
right now is a star which is dying,
OK, the name of it is Frosty Leo.
It's called Frosty Leo
because there's actually water ice
associated with it.
So Frosty.
The specific nature
of this research is what makes
SOFIA's capabilities so important.
Detecting water out among the stars
is actually not as easy
as you might think.
It's very abundant, but because our
atmosphere has so much water in it,
it's hard to actually observe.
So that's why we're in an aeroplane
above this, so we can detect
some of those types of objects.
But the technical challenges
don't end here.
Observing dying stars
thousands of light years away
from the back of a moving aeroplane
is easier said than done.
It requires the most sophisticated
engineering.
This telescope is actually
quite amazing, in the sense that we
are flying in an aeroplane which
moves through the atmosphere, which
shakes up and down and moves around.
But it can track on the sky
and point to an object,
and keep it fixed there,
with tremendous accuracy.
Once locked onto a celestial target,
the telescope stays steady.
This isn't the telescope
moving inside the plane
but the plane moving
around the telescope.
Navigating this flying telescope
is a unique challenge.
So we're going to go this way
until we get to San Antonio, Texas.
As the Earth rotates, the apparent
position of their celestial target
is constantly changing.
They have to ensure SOFIA is
always in the right spot to see it.
People ask, "Where, are you flying
tonight? "And I say, "I don't know.
"The United States."
Right now to
let you know exactly where the
aeroplane is, we are at 41,000 feet,
we are flying at point 0.85 mach,
about 550 miles an hour and,
right now we're just over
Jackson Hole, Wyoming and, er we're
heading on a south-easterly heading
along our desired track to keep
the celestial body of interest
in the field view of the telescope.
It's now
four o'clock in the morning.
Back in economy class the
astronomers have observed
a stellar nursery in the direction
of the constellation Cassiopeia.
What we're looking
at here is a region
where new stars are being born.
This region
is a little over probably
about 2,000 light years from us
in distance so we're looking at it
in back about the time
of the Romans,
that's when
the light originated from here.
And what we see here are not only
the stars themselves but there is
gas and dust left over from
the birth of the stars.
This dust provides a crucial clue
to how new stars might form.
The important part about this
is basically that
the stars themselves when they're
born affect their environment,
which in turn affects the next
generation of stars.
And so this may help to create
other stars in the area being born,
or it may actually help
to keep them from being formed.
'NASA 747 full stop.'
That's affirmative.
Observing a distant nebula
during a bumpy night-flight
in the back of a jumbo jet
is a remarkable achievement.
SOFIA doesn't have the magnification
power of the VLT, yet her ability
to reach the stratosphere
means that she can capture
certain infrared wavelengths
that never make it to the ground.
But just like the VLT, she will
never capture a complete picture
even at 41,000 feet
infrared light coming from space
can't be seen in its full intensity.
To observe this, astronomers have
to take their telescopes to the
final frontier.
'Three, two, one...'
April 24th 1990.
'Lift off of the Space Shuttle
Discovery'
NASA's newest, most ambitious
space telescope was launched.
'One minute thirty
seconds into the flight.
'13 miles in altitude, 50 miles down
range, travelling
at almost 2,000 miles per hour.
Hubble was transported to near Earth
orbit, 347 miles above the planet.
And it's still up there,
sending back images that have
changed our view of the universe.
But all this so
nearly never happened.
After launch, Hubble's mirror
was found to be faulty...
a problem only solved with
repairs made from the space shuttle.
The inspiration and lessons
learned from Hubble couldn't be
clearer for engineers in Los Angeles.
They're working on one of the
most advanced telescopes ever -
the James Webb Space Telescope,
possibly
the ultimate exploration machine.
It will take infrared pictures
to probe the biggest
cosmological questions.
How do galaxies actually form,
how do they
form those spiral shapes?
We don't know why.
Could life evolve in other
places in the solar system?
Could life evolve in other places
in the galaxy or in the universe?
Is there other life out there?
I mean, how much bigger can you get
than answering that question?!
The team's ambition is breathtaking.
But if controversies
over the $6.5bn price tag
don't derail the
project, their greatest discoveries
might be those they least expect...
Certainly with the Hubble
space telescope, the things that
we said, the reasons why we
should do it and what we would find,
what we actually found
blew the doors off anything
that we had imagined before.
And with James Webb telescope,
we're just creating a capability,
we're opening a door
to view the cosmos that could
never be opened any other way.
This time though there will be no
second chances if things go wrong...
All right, are you guys ready?
Just watch out, all the edges. And
make sure you're pulling correctly.
And just stop if you see anything,
OK?
Because once launched, the
telescope and its distinctive
3,200 square foot sun shield
will be completely beyond reach.
The James Webb space telescope is
actually being put in an orbit
at what we call an L2 orbit, or a
Lagrange two orbit, and basically
this is a point in space,
it's about a million
miles away from Earth.
We're talking a long way away,
we can't get to this one.
The telescope and its reflective
sun shield will be located
at the L2 point
so as to be far removed
from sources of infrared light,
which might blur its pictures.
The sun shield should protect the
telescope from any infrared energy
that remains.
What you're seeing here is
one layer of the sun shield.
When it deploys out, it's about
the size of a tennis court,
but the thickness of it
is only about the thickness
of a human hair, which is about
one to two thousandths of an inch.
The finished product will consist
of five layers, each coated
with silicon to reflect infrared
energy away from the optics.
Nothing like this telescope
has ever been attempted.
But perhaps even more remarkable
is that the team behind it
aren't entirely sure
what it might discover.
I think what's really amazing is
that you build this instrument,
you invent all these new
technologies,
you have some of the most amazing
people in the world contributing,
and once you have this instrument
operating in space,
you have no idea
what you're going to find.
I think it's fair to say that
telescopes open up the unexpected.
That's the main reason we're sending
this up there,
is to see what we
don't know is out there.
We can never predict the magnitude
of discoveries we can make as we go
and open up previously closed doors
into the cosmos, into astronomy.
We're expecting to see the formation
of stars, and galaxies,
and first light, and we have an idea
of what this might look like,
models, but we don't really know,
and that's why we have to send this
up there, because if we don't,
we'll never know.
The latest infrared telescopes
are ushering in a golden era
in astronomy.
These observatories have
already started to rewrite
the story of the universe.
But despite their technical ability,
they will only ever contribute
a single chapter, not the whole book.
To do this, requires telescopes that
can capture other types of light,
and examine the clues
that this light contains.
Back in the Atacama Desert, the
quest for different forms of light
is driving one of the most
ambitious science projects on Earth.
I think there's the potential to get
a whole new window on the universe,
to get a way to see into the biggest
mysteries and to start to probe
the ultimate origins of the
universe.
The questions
are as big as they come.
But the answers lie
in the most inaccessible
and invisible parts of space.
Some of the biggest mysteries are
the cold and dark places in space.
If you look right back to as
close as we can see to the Big Bang,
those are the regions where
the first galaxies are forming.
But it's very hard to see those
regions
because of the gas and dust
that they're actually forming from.
Very little light can escape
these frozen dust clouds.
Yet some does make it through.
It is known as submillimetre
radiation.
The problem for astronomers
is that this form of light
has less energy than infrared,
making it harder to spot.
To stand any chance, they need
a radically different style
of telescope.
Well, it's very difficult to
capture submillimetre light,
because of the technology that's
required, we need incredibly
sensitive instruments to do it,
you need a large telescope because
the radiation is, is very, very weak
and that radiation finds it very,
very hard to get through the Earth's
atmosphere,
and so we go to the highest, driest
places on Earth to do that,
and it's one of those places
that we're going to right now.
At 9,500 feet, on the side
of a mountain
in the centre of the driest desert on
Earth, Lewis and his team have built
a telescope factory.
Here, they are manufacturing large
quantities of giant antennas...
a necessity for capturing enough
of the faint submillimetre light.
What's so special is the way that
all these antennas will be used
together.
But that won't happen here.
They now need to be moved.
This is, you might say,
a pick-up truck or a jeep
is a 4x4 vehicle.
This is a 28x28 vehicle.
It's 8am on a Monday.
The start of a busy week.
The science doesn't happen here.
Although we've got something like 20
antennas around us at the moment,
this isn't really
where the observatory is.
The antennas themselves,
in order to do astronomy,
get taken 25km from here,
nearly two kilometres higher up
than we are at the moment,
which gives us a fantastic view
on the universe.
So we're taking it to the
Chajnantor Plateau,
which is very close
to the triple border point
between Chile, Argentina and
Bolivia.
The elevation is about 5,000 metres.
The air density's about 50%
that of sea level,
so we're taking it to a place where
there's basically very good
astronomical observing conditions.
It will take three hours for the
transporter to cover the 15 miles
up to the 16,500 ft high plateau.
For every foot gained in altitude,
air density and temperature fall.
This is extreme astronomy.
Having now ascended 3,600 feet, the
team are approaching a danger zone.
It's time to check
their oxygen levels.
OK, we're on the way to the high
site now, up at around about 4,000m,
and because of the altitude, my
blood oxygen level will be dropping,
so I'm just going to stop and check
how that's going, I know it was
about 95% saturation when we started
off at the 3,000m site.
So it's actually pretty good
now, it's at about 90, my pulse rate
is up a bit, but oxygen level
at 90 is very good.
We try and always make sure that it
stays above 80 as absolute minimum.
Mistakes made here could be fatal.
It can be very dangerous if your
oxygen levels drop too low.
The biggest issue for us for the
project is your ability to think
clearly drops off.
People can have acute problems,
so certainly people do die
of severe altitude sickness.
By midday,
the team reach the plateau.
It's the perfect location
for gathering submillimetre light.
The antennas here have over
three miles less air to look through
than if they were at sea-level.
But at this extreme altitude,
oxygen is an immediate concern.
We've arrived at the high site now,
we're on the Chajnantor Plateau,
an altitude of 5,000 metres.
The oxygen levels here are around
about half what they are at sea
level,
so I can feel the difference now,
it's pretty cold outside
but I can also feel that
my oxygen levels are dropping.
Whoa!
It's freezing up here now!
I think the temperature's probably
close to zero.
And there's a pretty strong
westerly wind blowing.
So with the wind chill,
that takes it well below zero.
My oxygen levels have been
dropping down into the 70s,
which is really not high enough.
Open the oxygen bottle,
turn the flow rate down.
It'll help me to concentrate,
and help me think, and make me feel
a bit better than I do just now,
then get the cannula in.
Not the best fashion accessory
you've ever seen, but it works.
The whole team are now on oxygen.
Without it, operations of this
complexity wouldn't be possible.
Placing the antenna
on the pad is an intricate task
requiring full concentration.
Those pads have precision ridges
on them, three ridges,
and they'll lower the antenna onto
those ridges, being very careful
about the positioning of the
antenna.
The combination of the skill
of the operator and precision
of those ridges means
that we can locate this antenna
to within around about a millimetre
of a known position.
Precision is vital.
Each antenna is just a small part
of a giant array, known as ALMA.
When it's finished,
66 dishes will operate as one -
the equivalent of an antenna
ten miles across.
A vast area is needed to capture
enough submillimetre light.
To enhance observations,
the array can be reconfigured
by relocating individual antennas.
The effect will be like
a camera zoom lens.
When we have the antennas spaced
very close tougher, that gives us
the ability to see large structures
in the sky. We can then
move those antennas further out
onto different pads, and make
a larger single telescope
comprised of those individual
antennas,
and that gives us the ability to see
finer and finer detail.
The complexity and scale of ALMA
is a measure of the soaring
ambitions of 21st-century astronomy.
Never in human history
have we been able to see so far out
into the universe with such accuracy.
I think there is something very
special about what we get to observe
with these sorts of instruments.
They don't always produce pictures
in the way that we think of the sky,
but they produce amazing insights
into what's really out there
and they help us understand,
not only how the universe
is created, but they also do really,
I think, satisfy our sense of wonder
about our place in that universe.
I'd really hope that in a few years'
time, once ALMA's been in operation
for a while,
that it will have started
to reveal the key science
that we built it for,
but I also am completely convinced
that what ALMA will do,
like all great observatories,
is that it will detect things
we haven't even predicted
we'll be looking for.
It'll be those complete unknowns,
I think, that'll revolutionise
our understanding of the universe.
But despite the wonder they reveal,
even the most advanced telescopes
like this can only provide
a partial picture of space.
Astronomy now is becoming what we
call a panchromatic science, really,
you have to combine the information
from different wavelengths,
from different types of technologies
and different observatories.
And that's really where
the great advances of astronomy
and our understanding of the
universe are going to come from.
Now, the very first panchromatic view
of the Universe is coming together,
a breakthrough driven by
the 21st-century renaissance
in telescope construction.
This is our nearest galactic
neighbour, Centaurus A,
seen in visible light.
It's a striking image,
but an incomplete one.
When seen in the infrared,
dust clouds begin to emerge.
In ultraviolet light, it's clear
that these clouds are the nurseries
for thousands of bright young stars,
all rotating around a central point.
But to understand this
requires X-ray imaging,
which shows high-energy jets coming
from the centre of the galaxy,
the location of a supermassive
black hole.
But even here,
the picture isn't complete.
This radio image shows how the jets
energise particles deep in space,
creating vast radio pulses stretching
out over millions of light years.
The invisible has been made visible
by a combination of telescopes
working across the vast spectrum
of light.
But to fully understand the universe
takes more than this -
it requires a fundamental shift
in what telescopes actually look for.
Most people think that astronomy is
about collecting light,
but actually it's a lot more
than that.
Millard County, Utah.
I think we are getting into an age
where the old astronomical
observatories, the classical ones
that we're all familiar with,
with optical telescopes -
although they'll continue on,
will gradually simply become part
of a much larger set of instruments.
Astronomers have always
been collecting light,
they're making bigger mirrors
to look further into the universe.
But there's another way to go,
and that is to look at
other kinds of energy
that the universe is producing.
Here, Professor Pierre Sokolsky
has built a new kind of observatory.
It's designed not to look for light,
but subatomic particles.
So here we are
in the middle of this desert
full of mosquitoes, and we're
approaching what appears to be
a rusty hospital bed, really kind of
a piece of junk if you look at it,
and yet it's part
of a multimillion dollar experiment
that consumes the passions
of hundreds of scientists.
It might not look like it,
but this is a telescope.
Part of one, at least.
So we have an array of these
detectors, they're about 500,
507 of them exactly,
they're spaced by about 1.2km,
and it's a rectangular array
which covers this whole basin.
The detectors lie in wait
for an elusive particle
first seen by astronauts on their
historic first mission to the Moon.
'Tranquillity Base, Houston.
'Roger, go ahead.
You're cleared for take off.
'Roger, understand.
We're number one on the runway.'
21st July, 1969.
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin
blast off from the Moon.
They now face a long
and perilous journey back home.
'Roger, we got you coming home...'
Only 24 men in history
have been this far from Earth.
Nearly all of them reported what
Armstrong and Aldrin saw next.
Here, beyond Earth's
protective magnetic field,
the astronauts started seeing stars.
Even with their eyes shut.
Bizarre dots and flashes of light
rippled through their vision.
Only later did scientists work out
that these phenomena
were probably caused
by particles called cosmic rays
passing through the vitreous humour,
the gel between the lens and retina
in the astronauts' eyes.
One of the marvellous things
about cosmic rays
is that they're really messengers -
they're actually pieces of matter
from distant galaxies,
so they're a marvellous gift to us
to study.
These intergalactic messengers
are constantly bombarding
our entire planet.
But to this day, an essential
mystery remains unsolved -
nobody knows which objects in
the universe produce cosmic rays.
To find out, astronomers here aren't
trying to catch one directly -
they're trying to spot its effects.
So when a cosmic ray hits
the atmosphere, it produces
what's called an air shower.
That's a bundle of billions of
particles that travel very near
the speed of light,
across the atmosphere and hit the
ground, and this is actually what
these detectors detect.
Under the metal cover
is a plastic layer...
the equivalent of the vitreous humour
in the astronauts' eyes.
It absorbs then releases energy
from the air shower
as a detectable flash of light.
But it's one thing to observe the
arrival of a cosmic ray,
quite another to pinpoint its origin.
It's very difficult to track down
the origin of cosmic rays
just with this equipment,
and the reason is
that we're looking at the very tail
end of this shower of particles
produced by the cosmic ray.
So it's a bit like describing an
elephant by looking at its tail,
you really have to see the whole
object, and to see the whole object,
we need to look high
in the atmosphere
and see what's happening
as that cosmic ray travels
through the atmosphere.
To achieve this,
Professor Sokolsky is relying
on another type of detector.
This is an air fluorescence
telescope.
It captures the flicker
of ultraviolet light
which is produced as cosmic rays
travel through the atmosphere.
So we have three such detectors,
one here, one twenty kilometres
in this direction, one twenty
kilometres in this direction.
So by triangulating the position
of this cosmic ray, we can then
figure out what angle it came from
and extrapolate that direction back
onto the sky, to see -
is there an object
that it came from?
The current theory is that cosmic
rays
come from jets streaming
from the region
around supermassive black holes.
When you're looking at that,
at those edges, at those frontiers,
you very often discover
the inadequacies of your
understanding,
and in that process learn something
new about the laws of nature.
So, revolutions occur very often in
step with revolutions in technology,
revolutions in scientific thought.
Since Galileo first
turned his telescope
to the heavens four centuries ago,
new technology has driven our
understanding of the cosmos.
It's a tradition that
continues today,
even in the most unlikely locations.
The world of telescopes doesn't
get much stranger than this.
Here in France,
astronomers are beginning to redefine
what a telescope actually is.
Dr Paschal Coyle is sailing for one
of the most unusual telescopes
in existence.
We're just now leaving the port
of Toulon in the South of France,
the telescope is located
40 kilometres off shore.
The Pourqois Pas is heading for
ANTARES, a telescope designed
to spot the most elusive and
mysterious cosmic particles of all -
neutrinos.
Neutrinos are a bizarre
elementary particle,
they have no charge, they
essentially have very little mass,
so they interact very little
with matter.
So we have to build telescopes
which are enormous to have even
the smallest chance to detect
just a handful of neutrinos.
Detecting a virtually invisible
particle is a real challenge.
But if the team's telescope can spot
one, and work out where it came from,
they might
rewrite the rules of the universe.
So the boat has now reached
the site of the telescope,
and it's located 2.5km
below the boat.
Everybody is preparing the submarine
to be deployed.
A telescope on the bottom of
the ocean might sound strange,
but that's only the start.
Because the telescope this
remotely-operated submarine
is heading for
doesn't look up
into the Mediterranean skies,
but down through the planet.
It's all due
to the incredible properties
of the neutrinos themselves.
Somewhere far out in the universe,
we expect there are sources
of very high-energy neutrinos.
The distances are enormous,
they can be millions and billions
of light years away.
If we're lucky, some of these
neutrinos will come close to
the Earth, and pass through
the atmosphere, in Australia,
pass right through the centre of the
Earth, through the core of the Earth
without really even noticing
it's there.
Having passed through the entire
planet, the neutrino will bump
into an atom of seawater,
causing a flash of light.
The telescope, strings of
light-sensitive detectors
suspended in the ocean,
will spot this light.
Or so the astronomers hope.
The name of the game with neutrino
telescopes is to essentially make
a neutrino sky map of the universe.
This search for the slippery
cosmic neutrino represents
a significant scientific challenge.
Their slipperyness
is what makes them so valuable.
They pass through cosmic obstacles,
revealing the hidden universe beyond.
Observing one requires
not only immense scientific
and engineering prowess,
but also a large helping of luck.
And today, luck is in short supply.
A cable connector here on the
telescope on the seabed is jammed.
Normally a broken connector
isn't such a major problem.
When it happens 2.5km under the sea,
it's almost a disaster.
It's a long night for the team
in the control room.
But despite their best efforts,
the connector remains jammed.
Another mission will be needed.
Beneath the waves,
the telescope is still operational.
But in over three years of searching,
the neutrino hunters haven't found
a single cosmic neutrino.
Yet their enthusiasm
and optimism remains undimmed.
We are convinced that these elusive
neutrinos are there, we don't
really know how big a detector
we actually need to be able to find
them, so maybe it'll happen that we
won't find any, in that case we
will try to build a bigger ANTARES,
so we have plans to build
a new detector which will be
50 times bigger than Antares.
This is the story of how
great discoveries happen.
Nobody really knows what the
team might end up discovering.
History has shown that every time
we look at the universe
in a new way,
we have had expectations of what
we might see, but in fact
the most interesting things were
the things we didn't expect.
This is the true power
of telescopes.
Many no longer look like telescopes,
but their ability to change our view
of the universe places them
among the most intellectually
explosive instruments ever made.
The 21st-century renaissance
in telescope construction
will answer the greatest questions
in cosmology,
and pose new ones.
It's very exciting to be
an astronomer right now.
We have telescopes in space,
we have telescopes at mountaintops,
we have telescopes in airplanes.
I certainly can't imagine a time
when we would be done
asking questions.
I can't imagine that
as human beings we'd ever be there.
I know sometimes people feel
insignificant or small
when they think about astronomy,
and they think about the cosmos.
And I think it's amazing
that we are the people,
we are the species who are able
to understand how we got here.
And that's not small,
that's pretty amazing.
is a universe we barely understand.
There are stars being born,
black holes,
perhaps even new forms of life...
But now, astronomers are able to see
the cosmos as never before.
They are creating a new breed
of super-telescope
of unprecedented power and clarity.
We have, at our disposal,
tools that have never existed
before in the history of mankind.
We're the first ones to get
to look at this,
you know you don't actually realise
how special a time this is.
This revolution in
telescope construction
promises a new age of discovery.
Right now is an extremely exciting
time to be an astronomer,
to be an engineer
building telescopes, because
the questions keep multiplying.
The answers keep coming too,
but the questions come even
faster than the answers.
Engines start at 7.15,
we'll taxi out at 7.25.
At the ends of the Earth,
astronomers are trying to capture
light that has travelled from the
farthest reaches of space.
So we're taking it
to the Chajnantor Plateau.
The air density's about
50% of that at sea level.
So gloves on, hat on,
oxygen happening...
more or less ready
for the Chilean desert.
Together, they are reinventing what
a telescope is and what it can do.
And they are rewriting
the story of the universe.
The Atacama Desert, Chile.
Hardly any vegetation,
moisture or life.
Mountains here have received
no rain in living memory.
They reach up over one and a half
miles into dry, cloudless skies.
Throughout history only death
awaited those who ventured here.
Until now...
This is La Residencia.
But this is no luxury hotel...
and the people here
no ordinary tourists.
This is the desert home
from home for astronomers
hunting for the most mysterious
and elusive objects in the Universe.
It's very exciting to be out
here in the desert, and what
we are actually doing here is,
we are looking for a very
particular object in our own galaxy,
we're looking for a black hole.
To locate this black hole,
astronomers will be using
one of the most
powerful telescopes ever built...
..the VLT - the very large telescope.
This, quite simply, is the most
advanced optical instrument
ever constructed.
The VLT is made up
of four main telescopes.
Each contains identical glass
ceramic mirrors -
the largest ever manufactured.
This is what it takes
to spot a black hole.
But it's not going to be easy,
even with the VLT.
A black hole...
the dense remains of a dead star...
has such a strong gravitational pull
that nothing can escape...
even light.
A black hole
collects all the light
so from a
certain distance from the black hole
no light can escape any more,
so in that sense you cannot observe
a black hole, because it's black.
To locate it,
astronomers will be searching for
clues in infrared light...
light which lies just outside
the visible part of the spectrum.
It is why the VLT is in the Atacama.
You need the most advanced
facilities to observe this
and to do so, um, you
need also very certain sites
that are dry for example
and so this desert here
is just the perfect place
for such research.
Dry air is vital...
atmospheric moisture filters out
infrared light coming from space.
By building their telescope above
the clouds on a desert mountain top,
astronomers hope
for the clearest possible view.
It's now late afternoon.
Inside the four telescopes,
engineers are preparing
for the coming night's observations.
These 23-ton mirrors
are fully automated...
and will be programmed in advance.
This 530 square-foot surface
can observe objects
four billion times fainter than can
be seen with the naked eye...
ideal for finding
a distant black hole...
As the engineering shift ends, the
black hole hunters' shift begins.
Gunther and his colleague Andreas
will be working through to dawn.
To find the black hole,
they need still, clear dry skies...
and this
appears to be the perfect spot.
These are the clearest skies
on Earth.
Here tens of thousands of stars
can be seen twinkling overhead.
But if you're looking for a black
hole this represents a problem...
Because in space,
stars don't twinkle...
To find the black hole,
the astronomers in the control room
have to get rid of this distortion.
So what we see here is a stellar
image and we see it
hopping back and forth,
and that is because the light
from the star, comes to us,
through the atmosphere of the Earth.
And we would like to ideally
get rid entirely of this motion.
Here at the VLT, engineers have
devised a way of doing this.
In the heart of the telescope
they prepare to create a
star of their own.
It will be used to calculate how
atmospheric distortion
affects the view of space.
A laser
is fired into the upper atmosphere.
It interacts with sodium atoms,
creating an artificial star
60 miles above the desert.
The ever-shifting image
of the artificial star
is used to constantly correct the
telescope optics
to create a stable
view through the moving atmosphere.
Back in the control room,
the black-hole hunters
are still hard at work.
Theirs is a world
fuelled by strong coffee.
Yes, to be here at, 4.30 local time,
in the morning, is very exciting.
Er, because, um, this is what
it is about to be an astronomer.
We are sitting here looking at the
phenomenon we are interested in
and of course you have to go home to
analyse your data,
and to interpret the data.
And to try to understand
what is going on.
But beyond that, you know,
you simply see the phenomena.
And that is what
all the excitement is about.
It might look like any other office,
but here they're closing in on one
of the most powerful
and elusive objects in space.
So here we have an image of the
central region of the galaxy,
and it's actually taken
in the infrared, its size
is about 300 by 100 light years.
The stellar density is highest here,
this is where the heart of the
Milky Way is located,
that's what we're interested in, and
we can now zoom into this region,
and this is actually a slice
taken at the centre of the galaxy.
Over here you see a small cluster
of high velocity stars,
they are orbiting this spot here.
These orbiting stars emit
vast quantities of gas.
And it's the behaviour of this gas
that holds the key to the
location of the black hole.
If we have a massive black hole and
gas coming towards it, it's going to
be accreted around the black hole
and may form a so-called
accretion disk.
So this is then hot gas
orbiting the massive black hole.
So the light coming from that
region, tell to us astronomers this
actually here,
at the centre of the Milky Way,
this object is the location
of a massive black hole.
It's a clever piece
of detective work.
This insignificant-looking dot
pinpoints the supermassive black hole
at the very heart of our own galaxy.
It might not look like much
but these few pixels
in reality cover an area
about 27 million miles across.
The black hole they orbit
is thought to be four million
times heavier than our own Sun.
Well, studying black holes and doing
astro physics, brings you basically
to the limits of understanding.
It brings you to the limits
of how we can describe the
world that we're living in.
So in the process of understanding
our world, telescopes
are very important,
because they basically represent
the eyes with which we look
at the universe.
It's 7am, and the astronomers
head down the mountain.
The power and optical resolution
of these new supertelescopes
are revealing a previously
invisible universe.
How many cups of coffee do you think
you drank last night?
Um, indeed when one stays up so
long, uh, one has to maintain your
concentration
and so coffee is a good way
to do so, so I had four or five
cups of strong coffee.
First of all, I'm very happy
because, uh, not only
the weather was very good now, but
we also could see the black hole.
That was a very successful night,
yes. It was exactly what we wanted.
Tired, Andreas?
Yeah. I'm actually tired.
So, I'm looking forward to having
this breakfast and then go to bed.
Few people come off shift having
seen the supermassive black hole
at the centre of our galaxy.
Just over a decade ago
such observations would
have been impossible as telescopes
like the VLT simply didn't exist.
At 8,600 feet
on top of this desert mountain
the VLT can capture vast amounts
of infrared light from space.
But not all of it.
The atmosphere filters out the rest,
even up here in this dry air.
To capture this missing light,
astronomers have to get their
telescopes higher
than this mountain top.
Much higher.
Palmdale, California.
If it's altitude you're after,
there are few better place to come
than here.
Flight 58. Another ten-hour jaunt
Northwestern United States tonight.
It's the beginning of a long
night for astronomer
Professor Terry Herter.
Engines start at 7.15.
We'll taxi out at 7.25 and take-off
is planned for 7.45
and we'll land
at approximately 6am.
Aircraft status? Good, it's fuelled.
We do have the crew oxygen issue,
but it's been checked.
Tonight, Terry and his team
will be trying to look inside
distant nebulae...
the cosmic dust clouds
where stars are born and die.
OK, so we're going to start with an
old friend we've already observed
this on a couple of flights.
This is Frosty Leo. This is a
nebula in the Constellation Leo.
It's known as a
Frosty Leo as it's got
ice lines at 43 and 63 microns.
To see into these mysterious places,
the team will be hunting
for infrared light.
Unlike visible light,
infrared can escape the dust
that shrouds a nebula.
But to capture this light
requires a most unusual telescope.
Meet SOFIA.
Suffice to say,
this is no ordinary jumbo jet.
This plane has been given
a one billion-dollar makeover.
What began as a conventional airliner
is now the world's largest mobile
astronomical observatory, with an
infrared telescope beneath the bulge.
That's all I got. Let's go!
Thank you.
It's now late afternoon.
This is only the third major research
observation flight for the team.
This is the first ever mission
to be filmed for television.
On board, technicians are
completing their preparations.
To capture the faintest infrared
light they have to overcome
a significant challenge.
They have to stop the telescope
from observing itself.
When you operate in the
infrared part of the spectrum,
everything around you emits light.
And for our instrument to detect
light from space,
we have to prevent
it from basically seeing itself.
It emits light
itself if it isn't very cold.
So essentially the colder something
is, the less light it emits.
By super-cooling the telescope,
the technicians will prevent it
from blurring its own images.
They are making it about as cold
as is scientifically possible.
Our instrument
is actually being cooled down
to a temperature just four degrees
above absolute zero,
about minus 273
degrees centigrade. Very, very cold.
With the telescope now cryogenically
cooled, the team are
getting close to take-off.
For Terry, it's a unique role - no
other observatory like this exists.
Airborne observing is rather unique.
It's hard to explain quite how
different it is to an astronomer
who's never been in this,
been in this seat.
You don't want to waste any time,
we're in the air burning fuel, you
want to be as efficient as you can.
It's sort of funny, I don't get
to worry about what goes right
usually, I'm worried about what's
going wrong and how can I fix it.
By 7pm SOFIA is ready for take-off.
For the next 11 hours the team will
be flying an arc-shaped course
as their celestial targets move
across the sky with Earth's rotation.
'Three, two, one...'
'NASA 747 heavy contact Los Angeles,
127.1. You have a good flight!'
This mission is taking SOFIA far
higher than jumbo jets usually fly.
SOFIA and her 17 ton-telescope is
heading for the stratosphere.
132.6.
Here, nearly eight miles
above the planet,
she will be above 99% of the
water and gases in the atmosphere.
At this altitude, the star hunters
can make infrared observations
which are impossible
for ground-based telescopes.
This is, er, what shall I say?
This is eye candy
for scientists
that we're dealing with.
Tonight, the team are searching for
infrared light telling the story of
the origin and destiny of stars.
So we're actually looking at the
case where a star is dying,
and throwing out stuff away
from it. And so we're looking at
the...what's called an outflow,
or the dying stage of a star.
It's crucial research.
The way stars die will influence
those born in their place.
The dots we're seeing on the screen
right now is a star which is dying,
OK, the name of it is Frosty Leo.
It's called Frosty Leo
because there's actually water ice
associated with it.
So Frosty.
The specific nature
of this research is what makes
SOFIA's capabilities so important.
Detecting water out among the stars
is actually not as easy
as you might think.
It's very abundant, but because our
atmosphere has so much water in it,
it's hard to actually observe.
So that's why we're in an aeroplane
above this, so we can detect
some of those types of objects.
But the technical challenges
don't end here.
Observing dying stars
thousands of light years away
from the back of a moving aeroplane
is easier said than done.
It requires the most sophisticated
engineering.
This telescope is actually
quite amazing, in the sense that we
are flying in an aeroplane which
moves through the atmosphere, which
shakes up and down and moves around.
But it can track on the sky
and point to an object,
and keep it fixed there,
with tremendous accuracy.
Once locked onto a celestial target,
the telescope stays steady.
This isn't the telescope
moving inside the plane
but the plane moving
around the telescope.
Navigating this flying telescope
is a unique challenge.
So we're going to go this way
until we get to San Antonio, Texas.
As the Earth rotates, the apparent
position of their celestial target
is constantly changing.
They have to ensure SOFIA is
always in the right spot to see it.
People ask, "Where, are you flying
tonight? "And I say, "I don't know.
"The United States."
Right now to
let you know exactly where the
aeroplane is, we are at 41,000 feet,
we are flying at point 0.85 mach,
about 550 miles an hour and,
right now we're just over
Jackson Hole, Wyoming and, er we're
heading on a south-easterly heading
along our desired track to keep
the celestial body of interest
in the field view of the telescope.
It's now
four o'clock in the morning.
Back in economy class the
astronomers have observed
a stellar nursery in the direction
of the constellation Cassiopeia.
What we're looking
at here is a region
where new stars are being born.
This region
is a little over probably
about 2,000 light years from us
in distance so we're looking at it
in back about the time
of the Romans,
that's when
the light originated from here.
And what we see here are not only
the stars themselves but there is
gas and dust left over from
the birth of the stars.
This dust provides a crucial clue
to how new stars might form.
The important part about this
is basically that
the stars themselves when they're
born affect their environment,
which in turn affects the next
generation of stars.
And so this may help to create
other stars in the area being born,
or it may actually help
to keep them from being formed.
'NASA 747 full stop.'
That's affirmative.
Observing a distant nebula
during a bumpy night-flight
in the back of a jumbo jet
is a remarkable achievement.
SOFIA doesn't have the magnification
power of the VLT, yet her ability
to reach the stratosphere
means that she can capture
certain infrared wavelengths
that never make it to the ground.
But just like the VLT, she will
never capture a complete picture
even at 41,000 feet
infrared light coming from space
can't be seen in its full intensity.
To observe this, astronomers have
to take their telescopes to the
final frontier.
'Three, two, one...'
April 24th 1990.
'Lift off of the Space Shuttle
Discovery'
NASA's newest, most ambitious
space telescope was launched.
'One minute thirty
seconds into the flight.
'13 miles in altitude, 50 miles down
range, travelling
at almost 2,000 miles per hour.
Hubble was transported to near Earth
orbit, 347 miles above the planet.
And it's still up there,
sending back images that have
changed our view of the universe.
But all this so
nearly never happened.
After launch, Hubble's mirror
was found to be faulty...
a problem only solved with
repairs made from the space shuttle.
The inspiration and lessons
learned from Hubble couldn't be
clearer for engineers in Los Angeles.
They're working on one of the
most advanced telescopes ever -
the James Webb Space Telescope,
possibly
the ultimate exploration machine.
It will take infrared pictures
to probe the biggest
cosmological questions.
How do galaxies actually form,
how do they
form those spiral shapes?
We don't know why.
Could life evolve in other
places in the solar system?
Could life evolve in other places
in the galaxy or in the universe?
Is there other life out there?
I mean, how much bigger can you get
than answering that question?!
The team's ambition is breathtaking.
But if controversies
over the $6.5bn price tag
don't derail the
project, their greatest discoveries
might be those they least expect...
Certainly with the Hubble
space telescope, the things that
we said, the reasons why we
should do it and what we would find,
what we actually found
blew the doors off anything
that we had imagined before.
And with James Webb telescope,
we're just creating a capability,
we're opening a door
to view the cosmos that could
never be opened any other way.
This time though there will be no
second chances if things go wrong...
All right, are you guys ready?
Just watch out, all the edges. And
make sure you're pulling correctly.
And just stop if you see anything,
OK?
Because once launched, the
telescope and its distinctive
3,200 square foot sun shield
will be completely beyond reach.
The James Webb space telescope is
actually being put in an orbit
at what we call an L2 orbit, or a
Lagrange two orbit, and basically
this is a point in space,
it's about a million
miles away from Earth.
We're talking a long way away,
we can't get to this one.
The telescope and its reflective
sun shield will be located
at the L2 point
so as to be far removed
from sources of infrared light,
which might blur its pictures.
The sun shield should protect the
telescope from any infrared energy
that remains.
What you're seeing here is
one layer of the sun shield.
When it deploys out, it's about
the size of a tennis court,
but the thickness of it
is only about the thickness
of a human hair, which is about
one to two thousandths of an inch.
The finished product will consist
of five layers, each coated
with silicon to reflect infrared
energy away from the optics.
Nothing like this telescope
has ever been attempted.
But perhaps even more remarkable
is that the team behind it
aren't entirely sure
what it might discover.
I think what's really amazing is
that you build this instrument,
you invent all these new
technologies,
you have some of the most amazing
people in the world contributing,
and once you have this instrument
operating in space,
you have no idea
what you're going to find.
I think it's fair to say that
telescopes open up the unexpected.
That's the main reason we're sending
this up there,
is to see what we
don't know is out there.
We can never predict the magnitude
of discoveries we can make as we go
and open up previously closed doors
into the cosmos, into astronomy.
We're expecting to see the formation
of stars, and galaxies,
and first light, and we have an idea
of what this might look like,
models, but we don't really know,
and that's why we have to send this
up there, because if we don't,
we'll never know.
The latest infrared telescopes
are ushering in a golden era
in astronomy.
These observatories have
already started to rewrite
the story of the universe.
But despite their technical ability,
they will only ever contribute
a single chapter, not the whole book.
To do this, requires telescopes that
can capture other types of light,
and examine the clues
that this light contains.
Back in the Atacama Desert, the
quest for different forms of light
is driving one of the most
ambitious science projects on Earth.
I think there's the potential to get
a whole new window on the universe,
to get a way to see into the biggest
mysteries and to start to probe
the ultimate origins of the
universe.
The questions
are as big as they come.
But the answers lie
in the most inaccessible
and invisible parts of space.
Some of the biggest mysteries are
the cold and dark places in space.
If you look right back to as
close as we can see to the Big Bang,
those are the regions where
the first galaxies are forming.
But it's very hard to see those
regions
because of the gas and dust
that they're actually forming from.
Very little light can escape
these frozen dust clouds.
Yet some does make it through.
It is known as submillimetre
radiation.
The problem for astronomers
is that this form of light
has less energy than infrared,
making it harder to spot.
To stand any chance, they need
a radically different style
of telescope.
Well, it's very difficult to
capture submillimetre light,
because of the technology that's
required, we need incredibly
sensitive instruments to do it,
you need a large telescope because
the radiation is, is very, very weak
and that radiation finds it very,
very hard to get through the Earth's
atmosphere,
and so we go to the highest, driest
places on Earth to do that,
and it's one of those places
that we're going to right now.
At 9,500 feet, on the side
of a mountain
in the centre of the driest desert on
Earth, Lewis and his team have built
a telescope factory.
Here, they are manufacturing large
quantities of giant antennas...
a necessity for capturing enough
of the faint submillimetre light.
What's so special is the way that
all these antennas will be used
together.
But that won't happen here.
They now need to be moved.
This is, you might say,
a pick-up truck or a jeep
is a 4x4 vehicle.
This is a 28x28 vehicle.
It's 8am on a Monday.
The start of a busy week.
The science doesn't happen here.
Although we've got something like 20
antennas around us at the moment,
this isn't really
where the observatory is.
The antennas themselves,
in order to do astronomy,
get taken 25km from here,
nearly two kilometres higher up
than we are at the moment,
which gives us a fantastic view
on the universe.
So we're taking it to the
Chajnantor Plateau,
which is very close
to the triple border point
between Chile, Argentina and
Bolivia.
The elevation is about 5,000 metres.
The air density's about 50%
that of sea level,
so we're taking it to a place where
there's basically very good
astronomical observing conditions.
It will take three hours for the
transporter to cover the 15 miles
up to the 16,500 ft high plateau.
For every foot gained in altitude,
air density and temperature fall.
This is extreme astronomy.
Having now ascended 3,600 feet, the
team are approaching a danger zone.
It's time to check
their oxygen levels.
OK, we're on the way to the high
site now, up at around about 4,000m,
and because of the altitude, my
blood oxygen level will be dropping,
so I'm just going to stop and check
how that's going, I know it was
about 95% saturation when we started
off at the 3,000m site.
So it's actually pretty good
now, it's at about 90, my pulse rate
is up a bit, but oxygen level
at 90 is very good.
We try and always make sure that it
stays above 80 as absolute minimum.
Mistakes made here could be fatal.
It can be very dangerous if your
oxygen levels drop too low.
The biggest issue for us for the
project is your ability to think
clearly drops off.
People can have acute problems,
so certainly people do die
of severe altitude sickness.
By midday,
the team reach the plateau.
It's the perfect location
for gathering submillimetre light.
The antennas here have over
three miles less air to look through
than if they were at sea-level.
But at this extreme altitude,
oxygen is an immediate concern.
We've arrived at the high site now,
we're on the Chajnantor Plateau,
an altitude of 5,000 metres.
The oxygen levels here are around
about half what they are at sea
level,
so I can feel the difference now,
it's pretty cold outside
but I can also feel that
my oxygen levels are dropping.
Whoa!
It's freezing up here now!
I think the temperature's probably
close to zero.
And there's a pretty strong
westerly wind blowing.
So with the wind chill,
that takes it well below zero.
My oxygen levels have been
dropping down into the 70s,
which is really not high enough.
Open the oxygen bottle,
turn the flow rate down.
It'll help me to concentrate,
and help me think, and make me feel
a bit better than I do just now,
then get the cannula in.
Not the best fashion accessory
you've ever seen, but it works.
The whole team are now on oxygen.
Without it, operations of this
complexity wouldn't be possible.
Placing the antenna
on the pad is an intricate task
requiring full concentration.
Those pads have precision ridges
on them, three ridges,
and they'll lower the antenna onto
those ridges, being very careful
about the positioning of the
antenna.
The combination of the skill
of the operator and precision
of those ridges means
that we can locate this antenna
to within around about a millimetre
of a known position.
Precision is vital.
Each antenna is just a small part
of a giant array, known as ALMA.
When it's finished,
66 dishes will operate as one -
the equivalent of an antenna
ten miles across.
A vast area is needed to capture
enough submillimetre light.
To enhance observations,
the array can be reconfigured
by relocating individual antennas.
The effect will be like
a camera zoom lens.
When we have the antennas spaced
very close tougher, that gives us
the ability to see large structures
in the sky. We can then
move those antennas further out
onto different pads, and make
a larger single telescope
comprised of those individual
antennas,
and that gives us the ability to see
finer and finer detail.
The complexity and scale of ALMA
is a measure of the soaring
ambitions of 21st-century astronomy.
Never in human history
have we been able to see so far out
into the universe with such accuracy.
I think there is something very
special about what we get to observe
with these sorts of instruments.
They don't always produce pictures
in the way that we think of the sky,
but they produce amazing insights
into what's really out there
and they help us understand,
not only how the universe
is created, but they also do really,
I think, satisfy our sense of wonder
about our place in that universe.
I'd really hope that in a few years'
time, once ALMA's been in operation
for a while,
that it will have started
to reveal the key science
that we built it for,
but I also am completely convinced
that what ALMA will do,
like all great observatories,
is that it will detect things
we haven't even predicted
we'll be looking for.
It'll be those complete unknowns,
I think, that'll revolutionise
our understanding of the universe.
But despite the wonder they reveal,
even the most advanced telescopes
like this can only provide
a partial picture of space.
Astronomy now is becoming what we
call a panchromatic science, really,
you have to combine the information
from different wavelengths,
from different types of technologies
and different observatories.
And that's really where
the great advances of astronomy
and our understanding of the
universe are going to come from.
Now, the very first panchromatic view
of the Universe is coming together,
a breakthrough driven by
the 21st-century renaissance
in telescope construction.
This is our nearest galactic
neighbour, Centaurus A,
seen in visible light.
It's a striking image,
but an incomplete one.
When seen in the infrared,
dust clouds begin to emerge.
In ultraviolet light, it's clear
that these clouds are the nurseries
for thousands of bright young stars,
all rotating around a central point.
But to understand this
requires X-ray imaging,
which shows high-energy jets coming
from the centre of the galaxy,
the location of a supermassive
black hole.
But even here,
the picture isn't complete.
This radio image shows how the jets
energise particles deep in space,
creating vast radio pulses stretching
out over millions of light years.
The invisible has been made visible
by a combination of telescopes
working across the vast spectrum
of light.
But to fully understand the universe
takes more than this -
it requires a fundamental shift
in what telescopes actually look for.
Most people think that astronomy is
about collecting light,
but actually it's a lot more
than that.
Millard County, Utah.
I think we are getting into an age
where the old astronomical
observatories, the classical ones
that we're all familiar with,
with optical telescopes -
although they'll continue on,
will gradually simply become part
of a much larger set of instruments.
Astronomers have always
been collecting light,
they're making bigger mirrors
to look further into the universe.
But there's another way to go,
and that is to look at
other kinds of energy
that the universe is producing.
Here, Professor Pierre Sokolsky
has built a new kind of observatory.
It's designed not to look for light,
but subatomic particles.
So here we are
in the middle of this desert
full of mosquitoes, and we're
approaching what appears to be
a rusty hospital bed, really kind of
a piece of junk if you look at it,
and yet it's part
of a multimillion dollar experiment
that consumes the passions
of hundreds of scientists.
It might not look like it,
but this is a telescope.
Part of one, at least.
So we have an array of these
detectors, they're about 500,
507 of them exactly,
they're spaced by about 1.2km,
and it's a rectangular array
which covers this whole basin.
The detectors lie in wait
for an elusive particle
first seen by astronauts on their
historic first mission to the Moon.
'Tranquillity Base, Houston.
'Roger, go ahead.
You're cleared for take off.
'Roger, understand.
We're number one on the runway.'
21st July, 1969.
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin
blast off from the Moon.
They now face a long
and perilous journey back home.
'Roger, we got you coming home...'
Only 24 men in history
have been this far from Earth.
Nearly all of them reported what
Armstrong and Aldrin saw next.
Here, beyond Earth's
protective magnetic field,
the astronauts started seeing stars.
Even with their eyes shut.
Bizarre dots and flashes of light
rippled through their vision.
Only later did scientists work out
that these phenomena
were probably caused
by particles called cosmic rays
passing through the vitreous humour,
the gel between the lens and retina
in the astronauts' eyes.
One of the marvellous things
about cosmic rays
is that they're really messengers -
they're actually pieces of matter
from distant galaxies,
so they're a marvellous gift to us
to study.
These intergalactic messengers
are constantly bombarding
our entire planet.
But to this day, an essential
mystery remains unsolved -
nobody knows which objects in
the universe produce cosmic rays.
To find out, astronomers here aren't
trying to catch one directly -
they're trying to spot its effects.
So when a cosmic ray hits
the atmosphere, it produces
what's called an air shower.
That's a bundle of billions of
particles that travel very near
the speed of light,
across the atmosphere and hit the
ground, and this is actually what
these detectors detect.
Under the metal cover
is a plastic layer...
the equivalent of the vitreous humour
in the astronauts' eyes.
It absorbs then releases energy
from the air shower
as a detectable flash of light.
But it's one thing to observe the
arrival of a cosmic ray,
quite another to pinpoint its origin.
It's very difficult to track down
the origin of cosmic rays
just with this equipment,
and the reason is
that we're looking at the very tail
end of this shower of particles
produced by the cosmic ray.
So it's a bit like describing an
elephant by looking at its tail,
you really have to see the whole
object, and to see the whole object,
we need to look high
in the atmosphere
and see what's happening
as that cosmic ray travels
through the atmosphere.
To achieve this,
Professor Sokolsky is relying
on another type of detector.
This is an air fluorescence
telescope.
It captures the flicker
of ultraviolet light
which is produced as cosmic rays
travel through the atmosphere.
So we have three such detectors,
one here, one twenty kilometres
in this direction, one twenty
kilometres in this direction.
So by triangulating the position
of this cosmic ray, we can then
figure out what angle it came from
and extrapolate that direction back
onto the sky, to see -
is there an object
that it came from?
The current theory is that cosmic
rays
come from jets streaming
from the region
around supermassive black holes.
When you're looking at that,
at those edges, at those frontiers,
you very often discover
the inadequacies of your
understanding,
and in that process learn something
new about the laws of nature.
So, revolutions occur very often in
step with revolutions in technology,
revolutions in scientific thought.
Since Galileo first
turned his telescope
to the heavens four centuries ago,
new technology has driven our
understanding of the cosmos.
It's a tradition that
continues today,
even in the most unlikely locations.
The world of telescopes doesn't
get much stranger than this.
Here in France,
astronomers are beginning to redefine
what a telescope actually is.
Dr Paschal Coyle is sailing for one
of the most unusual telescopes
in existence.
We're just now leaving the port
of Toulon in the South of France,
the telescope is located
40 kilometres off shore.
The Pourqois Pas is heading for
ANTARES, a telescope designed
to spot the most elusive and
mysterious cosmic particles of all -
neutrinos.
Neutrinos are a bizarre
elementary particle,
they have no charge, they
essentially have very little mass,
so they interact very little
with matter.
So we have to build telescopes
which are enormous to have even
the smallest chance to detect
just a handful of neutrinos.
Detecting a virtually invisible
particle is a real challenge.
But if the team's telescope can spot
one, and work out where it came from,
they might
rewrite the rules of the universe.
So the boat has now reached
the site of the telescope,
and it's located 2.5km
below the boat.
Everybody is preparing the submarine
to be deployed.
A telescope on the bottom of
the ocean might sound strange,
but that's only the start.
Because the telescope this
remotely-operated submarine
is heading for
doesn't look up
into the Mediterranean skies,
but down through the planet.
It's all due
to the incredible properties
of the neutrinos themselves.
Somewhere far out in the universe,
we expect there are sources
of very high-energy neutrinos.
The distances are enormous,
they can be millions and billions
of light years away.
If we're lucky, some of these
neutrinos will come close to
the Earth, and pass through
the atmosphere, in Australia,
pass right through the centre of the
Earth, through the core of the Earth
without really even noticing
it's there.
Having passed through the entire
planet, the neutrino will bump
into an atom of seawater,
causing a flash of light.
The telescope, strings of
light-sensitive detectors
suspended in the ocean,
will spot this light.
Or so the astronomers hope.
The name of the game with neutrino
telescopes is to essentially make
a neutrino sky map of the universe.
This search for the slippery
cosmic neutrino represents
a significant scientific challenge.
Their slipperyness
is what makes them so valuable.
They pass through cosmic obstacles,
revealing the hidden universe beyond.
Observing one requires
not only immense scientific
and engineering prowess,
but also a large helping of luck.
And today, luck is in short supply.
A cable connector here on the
telescope on the seabed is jammed.
Normally a broken connector
isn't such a major problem.
When it happens 2.5km under the sea,
it's almost a disaster.
It's a long night for the team
in the control room.
But despite their best efforts,
the connector remains jammed.
Another mission will be needed.
Beneath the waves,
the telescope is still operational.
But in over three years of searching,
the neutrino hunters haven't found
a single cosmic neutrino.
Yet their enthusiasm
and optimism remains undimmed.
We are convinced that these elusive
neutrinos are there, we don't
really know how big a detector
we actually need to be able to find
them, so maybe it'll happen that we
won't find any, in that case we
will try to build a bigger ANTARES,
so we have plans to build
a new detector which will be
50 times bigger than Antares.
This is the story of how
great discoveries happen.
Nobody really knows what the
team might end up discovering.
History has shown that every time
we look at the universe
in a new way,
we have had expectations of what
we might see, but in fact
the most interesting things were
the things we didn't expect.
This is the true power
of telescopes.
Many no longer look like telescopes,
but their ability to change our view
of the universe places them
among the most intellectually
explosive instruments ever made.
The 21st-century renaissance
in telescope construction
will answer the greatest questions
in cosmology,
and pose new ones.
It's very exciting to be
an astronomer right now.
We have telescopes in space,
we have telescopes at mountaintops,
we have telescopes in airplanes.
I certainly can't imagine a time
when we would be done
asking questions.
I can't imagine that
as human beings we'd ever be there.
I know sometimes people feel
insignificant or small
when they think about astronomy,
and they think about the cosmos.
And I think it's amazing
that we are the people,
we are the species who are able
to understand how we got here.
And that's not small,
that's pretty amazing.