One of the most sophisticated machines on earth, the ALMA — Atacama large millimetre/sub-millimetre array, opened its eyes this week and has started peering deep into the universe to find the light from the first stars.
The ground-based telescope array is still under construction, scheduled to have 66 antennas by 2013. Successful testing of the 20 existing antennas has allowed astronomers to start using it.
ALMA can detect light that is invisible to optical as well as infrared observatories and is expected to reveal images of the early universe that existing a few hundred million years after the big bang, when the first galaxies were forming. ALMA is located in the inhospitable environment of the highest plateau in the Chilean Atacama dessert.
New space missions planned
A mission to study the sun and another to understand dark energy has been chosen by
the European Space Agency.
The Solar Orbiter will go closest to the sun than we have ever been, finding out how it behaves with its immediate environment; it has been given a launch slot for 2017. The dark energy mission named Euclid, scheduled for a 2019 launch, will take shape of a space telescope mapping colossal cosmic structures, aimed at revealing more about dark energy that is speeding the expansion of our universe.
Chivalry in
insects
Male crickets have been found to favour the lives of their mates over their own. When in danger from predators, they allow their mated females to enter the safety of a burrow before they do themselves.
Hardly defined as intelligent beings, their chivalrous behaviour can be attributed to nature’s way of keeping fecundity high. Protecting females means extending time together and ensuring continuity of their genes in offspring.