Will the United States Lose the Universe?

[Zorro]

The United States is about to lose the universe.

It wouldn’t be quite the same as, say, losing China to communism in the 1940s. No hostile ideologies or forces are involved. But much is at stake: American intellectual, technical and economic might, cultural pedigree and the cosmic bragging rights that have been our nation’s for the last century.

In 1917, the 100-inch Hooker telescope went into operation on Mount Wilson in California, and Edwin Hubble eventually used it to discover that the universe is expanding. Until very recently, the mightiest telescopes on Earth have been on American mountaintops like Palomar, Kitt Peak and Mauna Kea. They revealed the Big Bang, black holes and quasars.

But no more. In 2025 the European Southern Observatory, a multinational treaty organization akin to CERN but looking outward instead of inward, will invite the first light into a telescope that will dwarf all others. The European Extremely Large Telescope on Cerro Paranal in Chile will have a primary light-gathering mirror 39 meters in diameter, making it 13 times more powerful than any telescope now working and more sharp-eyed than the iconic Hubble Space Telescope.

The European goliath will be able to see the glow of planets orbiting other stars and peer into the black hearts of faraway galaxies. Who knows what else it might bring into view.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/23/science/telescopes-magellan-hawaii-astronomy.html

[Lars39]

1. Furthering our brain drain.

[3Hotdogs]

2. What else might come into view?

Emperor Ming,The Merciless of the planet, Mongo.

[world wide wally]

3. I guess that's why we need a Space Force.

[PJMcK]

4. The lesson is to collaborate

There's no reason to try to make scientific discoveries nation by nation. Scientists should work together as they do at the Large Hadron Super Collider.

American scientists should be collaborators with the ESO organization.

Why not? Science really doesn't have national borders since facts are facts.

[lastlib]

5. "Facts are facts"? I'm guessing YOU won't be getting a job w/ trump admin....!

I think it started with rawny rayguns, killing the semiconducting supercollider in the 1980s.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

8. please prove that the LHC did NOT destroy the universe

Some info that may help, although, of course it doesn't exist since the LHC destroyed everything when it first fired up and therefore you're not really reading this because I don't really exist to be typing it and we're all just the nightmare of some n-dimensional caterpillar somewhere waiting to become a universe:

https://archive.org/details/LargeHadronCollider_201902

[RestoreAmerica2020]

6. Fascinating post! Thanks. Behind paywall so ill have to research other resources to learn more.

[yonder]

7. As a kid I was fascinated by the mighty 200 inch Palomar telescope.

Now there's one with almost 60 times the light gathering power of it. Maybe more, if you include modern day digital adjustments.