The largest telescope that will ever be built*
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- čas přidán 1. 10. 2023
- The asterisk is important. ■ AD: 👨💻 NordVPN's best deal is here: nordvpn.com/tomscott - with a 30-day money-back guarantee. ■ More on the ELT: @ESOobservatory eso.org
The Extremely Large Telescope, in Paranal, Chile, is probably going to be the largest optical telescope that will ever be constructed. I was invited out there by the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council and the European Southern Observatory, and I wasn't going to turn down a chance like that.
📰 DISCLAIMER
While the STFC and ESO invited me and arranged the logistics after arrival into the Antofagasta region, I was not paid for this (not even my travel costs) and I have sole editorial control over the video. This is not an advert.
👥 CREDITS
Editor: Michelle Martin / mrsmmartin
Script assistant: Laura Conlon
Audio mix: Graham Haerther and Manni Simon at Standard Studios
Thanks to Alex Fyans, Hannah Conduit, and William Taylor from STFC; to Francisco Rodríguez, Juan Carlos, and Michele Cirasuolo from ESO; and to everyone I met at Paranal!
🖼 IMAGE CREDITS
Images and footage from ESO is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license creativecommons.org/licenses/b... www.eso.org/public/outreach/c...
First image of an explanet: www.eso.org/public/images/26a...
Stars orbiting the supermassive black hole: www.eso.org/public/australia/...
VLT light path: www.eso.org/public/videos/Lig...
VLTI delay lines: www.eso.org/public/videos/eso...
ELT render: www.eso.org/public/images/elt...
📽 PREVIOUS VIDEOS
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sorry I don't have cash
half an hour??? we’re eating well tonight
This is your best video ever. Edges out your tightrope video.
Were the stars really that clear? Or did you use a generic picture on the Internet?
I have never seen them like that anywhere, especially in England, which even back in the 80's when you could see 20 so, now it's like 3 or 4
It was a pleasure hosting you, Tom! What a great video. We love your enthusiasm and the way you explain the technical challenges behind building such large optical telescopes.
You guys are awesome! I would love to visit at some point (I'm applying for PhDs in astronomy :)
May I have an extremely large optical telescope? I’ve had a rough time in life and I just feel like it would be a big help
So their CZcams tag is "ESOobservatory" but doesn't the "O" already stand for observatory?
@@justinlipkin’your chosen username is unavailable’ is something we can all relate to
@@justinlipkin I mean, we say "ATM machine" all the time, why not ESO observatory?
Nice of Tom to put in a disclaimer that gifts from the Extremely Large Telescope will not influence his review of it. It makes me much more inclined to buying my ridiculously big telescopes from the Extremely Large Telescope people.
My taxes pay for it.
@@maxmustermann5932God that's so cool.
@@maxmustermann5932 It is funded by the European union.
Tom always helps me to rationally decide how to invest billions of dollars into optical instruments of unusual sizes.
But money from NordVPN clearly influences his opinion of their scam ... err, service.
One interesting thing I noticed was that you had a lot of people from different countries all working together for the sake of astronomy. It’s kinda touching to see people from around the globe working towards a very human endeavor
That's the modern science community!
I thought that, too, and fretting even more about the petty outside world that seems to be busy destroying our kind and making the title come true...
It's why Brexit has been such a disaster for U.K. Science. So many of my STFC colleagues have left since the 2016 vote, many because they no longer felt welcome here, others because funding and science opportunities started to dry up long before Article 13 was invoked. Even though the U.K. has now secured Associate status with Horizon Europe and Copernicus, I doubt we'll ever regain the leadership positions we once enjoyed.
Funny how scientist's are more interested in science than politics.
Europeans coming to the Americas, colonizing and commandeering the land from indigenous peoples, leveling the top of their mountains to build a telescope, all for the sake of astronomy. Leveling off a mountain top for coal, bad, leveling off a mountain top for science, good. Stealing land from natives to build communities, bad, stealing land to build telescopes, good.
As a physicist, this is perhaps one of the best science communicator videos out there. Tom's enthusiasm and emphasis on the technical challenges AND achievements is outstanding! Thank you
He's so genuine
This video is a physicist?
@@Kalumbatsch He knows physics, not how to express them in human language. What do you think he is, an English teacher? :P
As a dude with a BS in something equally unrelated to astronomy I agree with you.
Fisics*
The fact that ESO had at one time proposed an even bigger telescope called the *Overwhelmingly Large Telescope* says it all when you gave scientist to naming things
What else could you call some bigger than extremely large? I would go for ridiculously large, but that might not get funding.
@@adrianthoroughgood1191 massive telescope
Overwhelmingly Large Telescope Final Final Final Final Final For Real This Time Final (5)
What about the ludicrously large telescope, or the LLT :D
KISS principle
A 30-minute video with Tom?! A blessing!
I so much hope, Tom will do more of these longer formats in the future - of course much less videos than today and whenever he'll be bored enough from his announced time off after this series here has ended. Because he is such a great storyteller and I'd love to see him take all the time needed for these exceptional stories he'll always be able to tell.
29 mins actually 😐
Let the bells ring out and the banners fly! It’s like five Tom Scott videos in one!
not many till we dont get any more
He's switched into Veritasium Mode.
This video is at (or above) the level of quality I'd expect from a tv network documentary. Really amazing work, Tom and team. Fascinating stuff.
I had 8 minutes so I thought a Tom Scott video would be perfect. 15 minutes in I realized this wasn’t a standard Tom Scott video. 😅
What an incredible place, science, and engineering. And incredible work filming and presenting it. What an incredible vote of confidence in your team to invite you out to see the site!
I did the same then got so excited when I realised how long it was 😂
L😂L
Is this video a glimpse into Tom's future? Nearly 30 minutes long, a deeper and more complex treatment of the subject, so much production values that there are actual credits for the production team, something that definitely won't be coming out every Monday... and it's still Tom being Tom. I am here for this, even if I'm barely able to follow.
He's taking a break starting in January. He's made no promises that he'll even return.
Reminds me of Veritasium's video style, which is a compliment.
If Tom converts to this format monthly, or even bimonthly, I think it'll be a sight to behold.
@@jocax188723 should be every 42 days, to please numberphiles
I will miss Tom, but I hope he does what he wants to do. Even if that means he does not come back.
Only Tom Scott can make a 5 minute video give 30 minutes worth of information. And only Tom Scott can make a 30 minute video feel like 5 minutes. Stunning work good sir. Stunning.
Well, half the video was his repeating that it will probably be the largest to ever be built.
The 'oh my goodness this thing is absolutly friggin gargantunly massive telescope' ;)@@suzyturquoiseblue-
@@inspiringengineer Yep.
@@suzyturquoiseblue-what?
You are saying exactly what I was thinking
I have been working for this Observatory for decades, I put my hands in so many things you showed here and so far it is the best video I have seen. Because of the quality of the explanations, because of the enthusiasm. In 30min you manage to cover a lot of things happening there (not all), that's remarquable. I am a bit disapointed to hear that you had to pay your fly ticket, but I guess ESO has not yet seen the importance of this kind of work for its communication. So a small message to those responsibles at ESO, please make it easier next time.
It's not that, he paid his own way to show that he wasn't being influenced by ESO journalistically.
As Intamin said, there's a good chance that Tom insisted on paying his own way to stymie any potential concerns about his journalistic integrity. I don't know if ESO would have offered to pay, but this is how Tom has operated in the past. Whenever he's invited to see something that isn't available to the general public it can lead to some implications around trust and control, so paying his own way where possible helps mitigate this.
Somehow, I don't think someone with a monetised CZcams channel with 6.5M subscribers is gonna be too worried about a return flight to Chile.
They probably offered to pay for it. It's just that Tom usually turns such offerings down in order not to make it an undeclared sponsorship.
Man Tom, you really won the career lottery. Visiting the most interesting places on earth and sharing them with the world. We'll miss you on your hiatus, but you've earned it.
His career didn't fall into his lap - He made it happen.
Life is a series of coincidences, but like backgammon, skill and pursuit of greatness helps too!@@ROGER2095
As a physicist watching this, please don't apologize for the analogy between radio waves and bass at 17:30. It's exactly accurate and a great example of science communication like so many other explainations in the video.
Thank you for the great job on this one. Seems like it really paid off to redo the script as the final version is just amazing and worth every minute of watch time.
Hi, sorry to bother you, but can you tell me a set of google keywords to understand 18:45 - i.e. why "light interferometry wont work because there is not a computer fast enough and a clock fast enough to collect visible light data in terahertz range"? Thanks.
@@anandsharma7430 It means that our current computer technology isn't yet fast and accurate enough to be able to transfer and store the massive amount of data they are collecting with these telescopes on a large scale.
@@anandsharma7430(My guess) A terahertz frequency light wave means you would need to collect 10^12 readings per second. So your computer & hard drive would have to record a Terabyte per second. I googled and modern hard drives are in the hundreds of Megabytes per second.
@@yitzakIr Hard drives wouldn't necessarily be the problem. You can easily have some RAM of a few TB which you can write to with 64GB/s. For shorter samples, it could still be faster for specialized gear. But that's still a factor of 10'000 away from 500THz of the visible spectrum. You would also need more than one sample per cycle, if you want to do interferometry.
Clock offest/jitter is a pain in the ass if you want to do interferometry. Probably much more of a hindrance than memory throughput. The latter one can be parallelized.
@@anandsharma7430similar problem to highspeed video cameras - recording hundreds of thousands of frames per second takes a lot of data so you can only store a short amount of realtime (e.g. a few seconds) to very fast storage on camera before storing it permanently to much slower storage on a computer (using hundreds of gigabytes of space). The Slow Mo Guys often talk about how they have to reduce the dimensions of the image they're recording when using the fastest framerates (and the fastest camera they've used lately only records in greyscale).
If you also want to match up the footage from two cameras, they need to be very accurately in sync in order to capture frames at the exact same moment and to match them up properly. High speed cameras can often do this with a direct cable connection between them to sync their clocks, but can only be so far away from each other (like how USB or HDMI cables have limits to their length - the signal gets weaker and less precise over a long cable).
For radio telescopes they can use very accurate atomic clocks to timestamp their observations and match them up later so no direct connection between multiple telescopes is needed, but light needs far more precision to make sure that two separate observations are from the exact same time (hence the elaborate and extremely precise mechanism between four light telescopes close to each other, compared to radio telescope observations made with telescopes from around the world).
Concerning your worry about the length of the video in the newsletter: don't worry Tom. We like your videos because they are always as long as they need to be to fit all the information you have for us. And having such a detailed video once in a while is phenomenal.
Ikr, it's not like he stretch it for watch time. I have no idea what he is talking about beyond surface level but the time flies quickly.
I can relate to this... keep hoping I'll absorb the difficult bits by osmosis.@@SirZeck
Hear, hear! (erm… read: read!)
I clicked without checking the length, and when I got to a TITLE CARD I thought something up and checked. Won't be able to watch on the ten minutes of lunch I have left, BUT super excited for a long form Tom Scott video, I kinda wish they were more frequent
AMEN! If a video needs to be an hour because of all the information, make it an hour. I regularly watch 40+ minute videos by somebody else and he is also regularly told to take the time necessary.
That's why I love the documentaries of Tom. Slow pace, explaining and showing everything as detailed as possible, admitting there could be errors on the information so we don't accept this as the ultimate library, everything set so great that a 30min video feels like a 10min one. Your videos are such a relaxing and learning experience.
3:00 this man is the most worthy to wear one of those galaxy hoodies
9:37 Fun fact about the air conditioning in these big observatories: When doing optical observations, it's important for the air to be still and stable. Introducing a temperature gradient to the air can cause distortion in the image observed by the telescope. To avoid this, large observatories often keep the telescope chamber (the dome) chilled to the expected overnight temperature, so that when they open the telescope to the night air, there is as little gradient in air temperatures between the telescope and the night sky as possible.
Oh wow. That make sense.
The small 3.9m Anglo-Australian Telescope's dome has a diameter of only 30m. The dome's air conditioning system was 100kW in power. We were disadvantaged by the wind shutter leaving an opening that was only very slightly larger than the mirror itself, so you've just got a 4x4m opening to the sky. So there was a lot of heat picked up during the day in the Australian summers, but then only a very small opening to equalise the temperatures during the night, if it wasn't otherwise cooled.
The observer rooms are removed to the side and behind airlocks for similar reasons
Telescopes are just like me in the summer.
So the thing where you go into a room that's too cold and you suddenly feel a bit weird, that happens to telescopes too?
Tom, in your newsletter you said you were worried that your audience woudnt be able to cope with this long video. Don’t be, its incredible! It is one of the best produced, best told stories I’ve seen and you should be proud of yourself! Thank you Tom and team for all the incredible work you have done the past few years and i am going to miss you!
Why are you going to miss him? Is something happening?
@@userjjb If I understood it correctly, at the end of the year the regular videos will unfortunately end and Tom will take a (well deserved) brake.
This didn't FEEL like a long video, because it kept my interest the whole way through.
After 5 minutes of the video I thought: "Finally a real Tom Scott quality video again, and not a rather shallow short one". I know that this is much more work, and not for all topics it makes sense to put together a 30min video, but _this_ _is_ _great_.
This is the best documentary I've seen in many years.
I don't know what kind of production team you have to help with all this but it is easy to recognize a colossal and effective effort. This felt like a ready-made presentation from the BBC. Thank you for all the time you put into this!
He uses Spielberg and Lucas.
When I worked at ESO as a student, we already made jokes about the naming of the telescopes. Still, one of my best and most interesting jobs I ever had. Loved it, sadly I didn't get to visit the VLT but my parents did (worked for ESO too).
The idea that we are able to spray down 7g of aluminum, pretty much atom by atom, on such a large surface is insane
Well you say we, but sometimes I miss with my deodorant spray.
What fraction of the thickness of an aluminum foil (0.016 mm) would that layer of aluminum be?
@@rallychamp2003 hahahahaha
@@jimi02468 they said in the video it's about 1000 atoms of thickness, which is roughly 0.00025 millimeters (or about 1/64 the thickness of an aluminum foil).
O.625% of the thickness of aluminum foil, if my math is correct.
I'm glad Tom clarified he took no payment for this video, because I could easily have been swayed into buying a gigantic telescope had ESO sponsored it
This video is paced to perfection, it felt like a 5-10 minute journey where every bit of information led to something new and built upon the rest, this is definitely one of your best!
I work for a company based in North Wales that are manufacturing some of the mirrors for this telescope! Large elliptical mirrors with a surface form error specified to less than 20 nm error. It's cool to see a video update on how the whole structure is going like this
It's easy to tell something is insanely cool when Tom Scott gives it a 30 minute video. This was soooo good, and I love how you are consistently incredibly respectful and awed by the work the people you meet do. They all seem so scarily smart.
They *are* scarily smart. This is the stuff the smartest people in the world work on. Right on the bleeding edge of what humanity knows.
Didn't even realise it was 30mins... That's how good it is
On one hand I’m sad we’re reaching the end of the series, but Tom has been treating us to some of his best work recently. This was amazing Tom and everyone involved 👏
Not ending, just slowing down
What the other guy said. I think it's more like he's going to take a vacation/sabbatical, then return at some point in the future after he recharges.
Yea, his description of the future sounded like some special subjects every now and then rather than weekly 5min episodes. If this is anything to go by I'm actually looking forward to the future now.
That did not feel like a 30 minute video - in a good way! I was so engaged for the whole thing.
What a masterpiece of STEM. This will never be obsolete. I can't wait to visit it if it ever becomes a monument.
with some luck, it will become redundant within our lifetimes
To expand on what tom said at 26:50. The faintness that can be detected with a telescope scales with the area of its primary mirror (or the sum of all the primary mirrors in an interferometer set up). The resolution (how accurately it can pinpoint were something is) depends on the largest distance between two points on the mirror. That's why interferometry is so powerful, it essentially replaces a full, solid mirror with a few small ones scattered along the edges. Which is why radio-telescopes can claim to be "as big as the earth" when it comes to resolution, because that's the distance they span. But there's no such shortcut for faintness, you simply need a big surface area one way or another.
That was a truly helpful comment, thanks!
As an astrophysicist, I am ............very, very, very, very, VERY jealous of Tom 😂😂
And also happy that he decided to shine a spotlight on one of the coolest engineering things I've ever known about (i.e. the world's largest telescopes)
Imagine having such a thing in your garden (preferibly on a mountain garden ig). On a side note: we really need to change our naming tendencies in the future. Otherwise the Overwhelmingly Large Telescope might be built as its own entity after all :)
As a studying astrophysicist, me too!!!
I only got to work with VLT data around 20 years ago, never got to actually go there. But I got to see PARSEC and SPIFFI being built.
This video is amazing. One of my favourites from him
how many years of school did it take for you to make astrophysics your career
It's insane to me that this was all funded, built, staffed, and executed purely out of curiosity and human progress. There's no motive beyond wanting to know what's in the great beyond. And you can tell that every single person Tom interviewed is incredibly passionate about their work too.
There is, finding out how gravity works or if "our" theories are correct, could make techonological advances. In some areas. ALSO getting ourselves into trouble create advances in technology, though I can't think in what way it would benefit us a cart that has a nonometer precision... Maybe in advanced CNC's machines... I can think of ways on how to use it....
It was the same way when I visited the LHC back in 2013. Asking questions purely for the sake of knowledge. Isn't it something?
There is great long-term value to be motivated by here. You probably refer to the short-term profit interest that has been very popular in the last two centuries though.
Projects like these show why public funding and taxes are very important for progress.
Yup. Curiosity. This is, to me, one of the fundamental tenets of what it means to be humane.
Curiosity implies a certain humility, and a certain amount of patience, regardless of the social affect/expression.
Curiosity isn't in-and-of-itself a virtue, but it's an important part of being a decent human. I guess we call this "necessary, but not sufficient"? :-)
I remember sending Tom an email about 3 or 4 years ago telling him about this telescope and other cool things to see in Chile that I thought would be worthy of a video.
I know the invitation this time came from ESO, but I like to think I had something to do with him making this.
Love from Chile!🇨🇱
Love your country Blopa12. Visited only one time but looking forward to coming back! I bet you did have something to do with Tom's visit! Congrats.
15:03 Wow… this is kind of like a physical active noise cancellation but instead of sound it’s cancelling out “atmospheric noise”. That’s just incredible precision
not just that, the errors and corrections have to be computed in two dimensions 😉
I have an entirely new appreciation for the scientists and engineers who put these large telescopes together now. Way more complex than I had imagined.
This was such a well written storytelling. It explained every piece in detail without losing the grand picture of why the pieces are important for the story.
It really made this feel exactly like your usual 5 Minutes ones, just a little bit longer
Yeah, if I hadn't seen the length when I first clicked on it, I'd have assumed about 10, maybe 15 minutes had passed by the time it was over.
I had no idea about these tunnels, incredibly precise carriages and mirrors under that facility. That blows my mind. Thank you Tom for creating this masterpiece of a video ❤
I just thought of a bad joke... He was really there to see the "train carriages" that centralize the four light sources into one... 😂
I worked at the computer control of the mirror in the tunnel. The position is precise to nanometers on a distance of 60 m. Fokker Space in the Netherlands.
I can't believe a video of such supreme quality is free to watch!
Fun fact: if you plot the size of the largest telescope against time, from 1900 to today, you get a fairly good linear correlation... that completely fails to predict the ELT's size!
That's what makes it extreme.
Statistical Anomaly FTW
Is there a website where i can see the list of largest optical telescopes throughout time?
@@Lscott-fk2sn Just search Wikipedia for list of large telescopes and sort by "built".
(It's a great example of how extrapolating can fxck up.)
Hello Tom and the team! I must say, this video is absolutely fantastic!
Oh, astrobiology next to a telescope! It was meant to be!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the Atacama (or parts of it) is the driest place on the planet, no?
Years???
@@oliviapgyep it is
It just lives under rocks? That are sitting on the surface? That seems incredibly precarious! There must be regular katabatic winds coming down from the Andes across the desert to the sea just a few miles away, right?
About a year ago I head the pleasure of taking an engineering tour of the Sistine Chapel of astronomy, the Mt. Wilson Observatory near Los Angeles. The dome on their 100" telescope is also designed to rotate to follow the progression of stars throughout the night, except the entire observation deck, the control desk, all that stuff, rotates with it. When they spin the dome and you're inside you swear that the telescope is pivoting rather than the room you're in. It's remarkably quiet and completely smooth, an amazing accomplishment considering it was built about a century ago.
Blows me away that there are humans who can figure this out and build such amazing machines.
They are the virtuosos of discovery, design and construction.
As Tom said.. .Lots of Maths!
Tom Scott could make a full length (2+ hr) documentary about literally anything and I would watch every minute of it
Tom's retiring from CZcams soon, presumably so he can live out that dream of documenting science that can't be neatly contained in a
Tom and Alec (from Technology Connections) are two of a very small group of people in the world that can make me interested in literally anything for an hour.
@@djhakase
Isn't he just taking a break, not retiring?
@@chrisstone1710 I'd include Jon Bois, but he's started getting unsatisfied with only doing a single hour.
@yutahkotomi1195 I believe he's no longer committing to fortnightly releases. I've come to expect CGPGrey levels of output from CZcamsrs once they no longer commit to a schedule. That is effectively retirement.
I just finished watching and.. Honestly, the precision with which those machines work is insane.
I am having trouble fathoming that humanity can be that precise. It seems crazy to me
@AstolfoGayming Fate Secondary?
Yet the temperature in my shower is either freezing cold or scalding hot.
It's not so much the precision that gets me but when you combine that precision with the sheer scale of the components. It's mind-blowing
@@UnremarkableKevin you just need all that precision to adjust the tap.
I know. I have a couple of machines that are good to 0.001" (well they were when new). But how did we get here from rubbing sticks together. How do we make a more accurate machine with a less accurate one ?!?!? Makes my brain itch.
I didn't know the giant laser adaptive optics were applied at M2! I had always, for no good reason, assumed it was at the big mirror. I love it. Great. Thanks!
It's reassuring that in all the chaos of humanity, there are a handful of us focused on something actually important... like understanding anything about our base reality. If only more of us could be mobilized towards these goals. If only more of us were interested in these goals at all.
22:56 "The UV index is just...
yes"
great line
Knowing that I have a 29 minute Tom Scott video to watch after these last 2 exams is all the strength I need. High-quality, interesting, informative, humorous; an unbelievably amazing reward.
enjoy them while they last.
Exams already? Does your school work on a trimester system or something? The fall semester just started!
A 30 minutes video? Not an easy subject but so clearly explained that time passed without being noticed. Short format is good when things are simple to show, but in this case longer size is perfect. Great job.
This feels so aperture science it should become the theme of a mod
I didn’t realize until now how special my astronomy coursework dealing with telescopes like this really was until now. You get desensitized to the wonder.
I think the focus on the mathematics also takes away from the wonder, it becomes almost mechanical for us when you study it in depth
What course are you doing if you don't mind me asking?
@@CJVale The focus on mathematics has only added to my wonder.
One of the physics exam I took to gain access to an engineering school was about interferometry and the VLT. The subject was interesting enough I still remember it 25 year later, even if I'm unable to do that kind of maths anymore.
@spookyspoon4192 I studied astrophysics, I graduated ten years ago, actually. When I was doing the maths, because that was what I was good at, it made it very mechanical to me. It did make me appreciate the conceptual lectures more though.
I was actually in a lecture where they were explaining the ELT in its concept stage, it's nice to see the building actually being built
My company did all the steel design work for a few large telescopes and the accuracy and special things we have to do for it is insane. We did one before computers and some of the older guys still have stacks of books that they used for checking the geometry of it all.
As a physicist, that explanation of low frequency bass sound travelling further is exactly on point!
And it also shocked myself, I never really put much thought into it and always assumed the people far away were listening to the heavy bass music...
I guess I just don't really care about music, or what people far away are listening to in general
One of Tom's highest quality videos yet. Enticed the entire time, amazing stuff being shown and explained quite well to someone without the faintest clue how any of this works.
So, no one will mention the Spanish Rickroll at 27:56
For the curious, he says, "No voy a renunciar a ti," which is "never gonna give you up" 😂
yesss! finally someone else notices, i though i was the only one lmao
@@LuisMunoz-ee1uhjajajajajaja! Me too
How does Tom keep finding this bigger than life projects to make videos about? It's incredible. They make me feel amazed at what humanity is capable of. So many other sources just make me feel like humans do it all wrong, but Tom's videos are not like that at all. Thank you Tom.
Nowadays, people find him to make videos about their larger than life stuff. What they will do when he takes his upcoming sabbatical will be “interesting”.
tom scott had a google doc where you could submit suggestions on places to go
he has to finish his run as large as possible.
@@TwoTreesStudiowhat qualifies you to make a statement like that?
He asks people to send ideas in, that’s how.
it is honestly so fun to see someone be as passionate as Tom in sharing knowledge to his audience
The rail precision is within a quarter wavelength of visible light at 100nm. That's insanity.
I honestly find stuff like this very moving. Humans are deeply flawed and occasionally horrible and vicious creatures... but when we work hard, put our minds to something and cooperate, we can forge great wonders.
Some humans 😉
I was thinking a very similar thing as I watched the video… humanity at its best when trying to grasp our place in the universe, the nature of it and why things are the way they are. We really can do some amazing things when we work together. Wonderment and cooperation that leads to knowledge versus strife, violence greed and jealousy.
@@AlphaGeekgirlyeah, unfortunately that’s a valid observation.
Do you believe in GOD DodderingOldMan?
@@Sirder Nope.
I love how Tom Scott-the man who has been to Resolute and Svalbard-describes the Atacama desert as the most desolate place he's ever been.
But it's not as bad as going to Slough.
@@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721🤣
Is this before or after he went to Antarctica?
One of the best technical overview I've ever watched. Thank you.
The extreme precision required, and the tech needed to achieve it, are just mind-boggling. It can't even imaging how people can create such a marvel.
We are so incredibly privileged to have these avant-garde scientific facilities in our country Chile, hopefully it will continue to attract people to Astronomy and Astro Engineering careers...
como dijo un sabio, somos el mejor país de chile, saludos desde high bridge, london
Mujica? Croatian descent?
Also Moreau, prob french@@ot0m0t0
I'm an astrophysicist and this is the Paranal tour I've always dreamed about! Thank you for dedicating one of your last episodes to such a cool topic :D
Telescopes really are a master work of all fields of engineering working together.
Waited a bit longer to watch this long format video and it was definitely worth the wait. What a great video, so much Tom Scott in one go! If you decide to return after your hiatus maybe this kind of format would be a nice switch up?
Scientists have been unable to locate the Comically Large Imaging Telescope (CLIT), and it may never be found.
As a physicist I don't think the comparisons are actually that bad. Yes, they are not 100% accurate, but they get the point across, and the fundamental principles are, if not the same, very similar. If you want to be accurate, there is no way around just doing the math, which is way beyond the scope of a video like this, or it's target demographic.
So well done.
Oh, so _that's_ why it's called the Extremely Large Telescope. I had heard of it but had never really grasped the scale, nor the incredible amount of work that people have to put into it.
Turns out, building a moving structure with high precision system is expensive
8:52 the VLT mirror shape is parabolic, not spherical. I think he meant to simplify.
When tom retires from weekly videos, hopefully we still get occasional long videos like this
At 10:42 he wanted to say that's way more than what you'd get from the grocery store, but because of how the makeup mirror comparison went- he didn't. Exceptional.
Delaying the light beams physically with such accuracy without bringing readings into the digital domain prematurely is breathtaking. Thank you so much for your brilliant reporting your ongoing channel activity will be missed but not forgotten.
As an Aussie, I really like that they try very hard to make sure everyone stays aware of the dangers of UV burns, (which must be much more dangerous at an altitude of 3000m than they are at my usual altitude of more like 30m, but I'm laughing my arse off at seeing the "slip, slop, slap" campaign that was all over TV and radio here (and in NZ, it seems) throughout the 80s. Especially the explicit use of those words at 02:14 😂
It works, too! Skin cancer's horrible people, be sun-aware!
Our UV index routinely gets as high as 14 for a huge swath of the year. The Sun is very much NOT your friend for at least 5 months of the year, and even more so if you are at all pale.
You know it is serious, if a scale goes to 11.
@@AndreasHontzia😁
I loved the line "The UV rating here is just 'yes' "
we've been in ESO a couple of months ago and was fantastic. Unfortunately we couldn't get in, but being there was a dream come true. cheers from Brasil!
You did such an amazing job at this video, never boring, and wished it was longer!
May you continue growing in skill and access, and find ever more impactful things to do!
For something less scientific, I work for the company that did the heating for those telescopes, all the way back in Sweden 😊 Amazing to see these feats of engineering!
A masterclass in science communication. I am awestruck at every element of these incredible machines. The human Ingenuity and hard work to make it all happen is inspiring! Thank you Tom!
Oh my goodness! So, I'm a deep sky astrophotographer and have been for a good couple of years now. One of my biggest bucket list goals is to go to Chile for their skies some day. The VLT setup is incredible.
Looks like there was a heap more footage that ended on the cutting room floor.
I for one would love to see the long form raw cut of your tour Tom.
Looks like much wisdom was shared by the extremely knowledgeable and passionate team.
Dude I was just thinking “it would be awesome to go to Chile someday and stargaze.” Thank you for doing it so I can just look at my phone ✊🙏😂
No you were not.. c'mon, fess up. That didn't happen😏
😂
*I go down to Chile to stargaze*
Singer/songwriter, #1 Valiant fan, *and* a Tom Scott enjoyer? What can't this man do
Love seeing you everywhere I go. Legend.
If Tom makes a video over 15 minutes, you know its gonna be a real good time
What a fantastic video Tom! As an amateur astronomer, I found this video very educational. And I learned something I never knew. at 15:10, where you are talking about the adaptive optics and the 4 lasers, you mentioned that the adaptive optics distorts the M2 secondary mirror. I always thought it was changing the M1 primary mirror. Learned something new today. Thanks again!
Great video, Tom! You have a knack for explaining highly technical things in a simple manner without dumbing down the subject matter to the point of uselessness. And your enthusiasm for your various subjects is contagious, much like that shown by Destin on Smarter Every Day. Thank you for teaching and entertaining us.
When Tom has a 30-minute video up you know it's going to be special.
That party music analogy was elite 😂 Never heard of it before.
I’m glad you came to Chile. I know it’s an exhausting and expensive trip from the UK, BUT if you ever come with a lot of time, you’ll find multiple sources of very different content in just one road trip north to south or the other way around.
I hope we treated you well, you did an amazing job.
Cheers, Tom.
That "atomizing" part absolutely blew my mind.
The "I had a script prepared, but" videos are always the best.
I aspire to one day have the overwhelming confidence of a man wearing a galaxy print hoodie to work on a telescope.
Amazing video, Tom, one of your best ever imo! Exactly as in-depth as it needs to be and remain comprehensible and enjoyable.
And he totally pulled off that hoodie.
Longer fun videos like this one going in-depth on a particular topic, while releasing videos less often could be an incredible balance for Tom and his team moving forwards
I agree
A half-hour deep dive like this a few times a year would be very satisfying.
Love this longer format. Hope you keep doing this stuff!
Chilean telescope sites are unreal - so cool to see the tech being deployed there. We operate several robotically (LCOGT) at Cerro Tololo and indeed it was the best sky I'd ever seen in my life, even at only about 7k feet. This was a fascinating glimpse into some more impressive projects!
Not just reaching the limits of technology, I think they're reaching the limits of size-related adjectives.
This was AMAZINGLY educational, holy cow. So much info in a short time and in a fun manner! Loved this one! Did not expect to enjoy all 29 minutes of it, very nice!!!
Absolutely amazing video, Tom. I hope you can visit more telescopes, they're all quite different despite looking similar.
All I know about the Atacama desert is that when Top Gear was there Richard Hammond was the smallest living organism in the desert.
As a photographer whose built cameras before and a penchant for light, thank you for taking me on a tour of what are some of the largest and best camera ever made? Or certainly one of them. The precision is on another level.
Most large telescopes are operated mostly for spectroscopy rather than photography (though they can do both).
@@gordonrichardson2972 just as well that I don't build massive telescopes! 🔭 But thanks for that factoid.
@@walterroux291 Never late to start! ;)
@@Sekir80 I do actually want to get a telescope, once I've moved to the countryside!
@@walterroux291 Great idea! I already have mine, but I had to move to a flat so very rarely use it. If you have any idea what you are most interested in looking for (planets, stars, nebulae) I can guide you to select a scope for your needs.
This was easily one of your best videos to date Tom, I'm going to watch this again in a few weeks time... I can tell :D
This is easily one of your best videos in recent memory, and has a really great presentation of all the material. I would love to be able to visit these scopes someday...
This is a topic I have some knowledge of, as an astronomy educator, amateur astronomer and astrophotographer. I'm not an absolute expert in any of these, but have enough knowledge to know when something is 'off' when it comes to explanation. I can usually spot at least a little inaccuracy in reporting in this field, and I'm happy to say that there was none here. Tom, you really do your research, and then find ways to explain things that might be extremely complex in ways that pretty much anyone can understand. I know that already, having watched you for years, but I've been following developments in telescope technology for even longer, and have watched as the VLT, ELT, and the OWLT progressed from ideas on paper to where they are now. Knowing you got all of this right gives me confidence that all the other topics you cover have the same attention to accuracy, which is something I cannot say for others I follow; even the ones i really like.