Massive telescope to help Canadian scientists solve mysteries of the Universe

After some nerve-wracking months, many a Canadian astronomer’s dream is one step closer to reality. The Federal government has finally come through with $243.5 million in funding to ensure that our nation remains a partner in the building of the largest telescope the world has ever seen.

The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), truly promises to be a cosmic discovery machine. It represents an ambitious $1.4 billion project to build an optical instrument that is three times larger than the biggest observatory in existence today. It will have views that will be 10 to 100 times better than anything we have now—even outdoing the venerable Hubble Space Telescope. And this incredible power will allow us to literally peer into the most distant corners of the Universe and explore alien worlds like never before. The goal is to be able to shed light on some of the most fundamental workings of the cosmos

“TMT concentrates nine times more light into one ninth the area on a detector boosting brightness a factor of 81 compared to the best current telescope,” said Raymond Carlberg, an astronomer at the University of Toronto and the Canadian project director.

The ground has been broken on the project near the summit of Hawaii’s Mauna Kea, which is a collaboration of international partners including Japan, United States, China and India.

But Canada’s commitment goes beyond just ensuring the nation’s scientists are the first to look through this monster eye on the Universe, it also promises to boost the quality of fundamental science done within the country and help stem the threat of a brain drain in this fast-paced field of science.

“We will be able to attract a new generation of really great people into astronomy-related positions in Canada,” said Carlberg.

“They will work with students and the public to help understand the excitement of their discoveries.”

But what kind of discoveries do researchers hope they’ll be able to make with the Thirty Meter Telescope? Here’s a rundown of the top five biggest finds the scientific community is hoping to make with it:

1. Exoplanets and the chemical makeup of their atmospheres

Researchers are hoping to use this telescopic monster as a workhorse that will help directly image and examine in detail the growing list of Earth-like planets around distant stars that are currently being uncovered by space-based exoplanet hunters like NASA’s Kepler mission, and the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope.

Canadian astronomers are already in the forefront when it comes to taking pictures of large planets orbiting stars using existing large observatories, but with TMT, they will be able to take it to the next level.

“We can expect images and spectra [chemistry from the light] of Uranus and Saturn-like planets orbiting nearby stars and catch protoplanetary disks in the act of conceiving new planets,” said Jaymie Matthews, an astronomer at the University of British Columbia at Victoria.

And what may be the most exciting thing for TMT to explore when it comes to Earth-like planets will be to examine their atmospheres, looking for the chemical signatures of water, carbon dioxide, oxygen and even ozone.

To actually be able to detect the existence of molecular oxygen and ozone, on a world that may be covered with a liquid water ocean, would all make for tantalizing biomarkers indicating some sort of life, says Matthews.

“People often want signatures of celebrities,” he explained. “But it’s planets with life that are the ones starstruck scientists want on their Maps Of The Stars.”

2. Black holes at the centre of galaxies

Astronomers discovered a supermassive black hole lurking at the very core of our Milky Way galaxy, and it is a true monster, weighing in at about 4 million times the mass of our Sun. But it is only one of many monster black holes that lie hidden at the heart of most galaxies we see across the entire Universe.

Einstein predicted the existence of these cosmic beasts in his theory of general relativity, and now that we can study them in the real universe, they offer amazing laboratories for the study of physics in extreme environments.

TMT will also extend our ability to measure accurately the sizes of black holes in other distant galaxies too, shedding light on how these cosmic predators feed off of stars and gas that fall into them.

But there is so much we don’t know about supermassive black holes that TMT may finally answer, like how they formed and how exactly they are tied to the birth and evolution of galaxies, including our own Milky Way.

3. Birth of the first stars and galaxies in the universe

At the other end of the universe, the TMT with its enormous light gathering capability will be able to reach back to a time soon after the Big Bang when galaxies were just forming and their first stars were turning on. The hope is that TMT can study in detail the very young and distant galaxies identified with the Hubble Space Telescope’s Deep and Ultra Deep Fields, and answer some intriguing questions about those first generation of stars nearly 13.7 billion light years away.

TMT will allow astronomers to actually find out the chemical recipe that went into making those first stars right after the Big Bang.

“This revolutionary instrument will lift the curtain on the end of the cosmic “Dark Ages”, when the first stars and galaxies were born and the first heavy elements—the building blocks of future planets and life, including Earth and us—came to be,” added Matthews.

4. The nature of dark matter and dark energy

Turns out that dark matter and dark energy are the main ingredients of the universe, yet we have no idea where they come from or what they are made of. Roughly 68% of the Universe is made of dark energy and 27% is dark matter. By their definition, we can’t see them., but we can detect their effects on our observable Universe.

Einstein’s General Relativity predicts that mass—even unseen ones - actually can bend light from distant galaxies. We see this in photos of galaxy clusters surrounded by bizarre arcs of light, known as “gravitational lenses”.

We believe if we look carefully at these arcs, we should see tiny kinks in their structure. These anomalies could be the key to solving the mystery surrounding dark matter and TMT may allow us to see the arcs in high resolution—at least one whole order of magnitude better than we can now.

TMT will also be able to capture very distant explosions of giant stars—known as supernovae—when the Universe was at its youngest. By observing supernovae, astronomers can reveal how the signature of dark energy changes over time, thus furthering our understanding of the mysterious force that drives the accelerated expansion of our universe.

5. Completely unanticipated discoveries!

Of course, the most exciting discoveries are the ones we have no clue what they will be about.

While the possibilities are endless, TMT may very well stumble across weird new cosmic objects, finally peel back the secretive veil surrounding the origins of our Universe, or maybe even find evidence of life on alien worlds circling nearby stars.

One thing is for sure, the fact that TMT will dwarf all observatories in existence today means that it will no doubt open up a new window onto the universe the likes of which humans have never seen before, that will both help solve many cosmic mysteries and reveal exciting new ones too.

Follow Andrew on Twitter: @thenightskyguy