Cosmologists are preparing to cast their sharpest-ever eyes on the early Universe. From an altitude of 5,300 metres on Cerro Toco, in northern Chile’s Atacama Desert, the Simons Observatory will map the cosmic microwave background (CMB) — sometimes called the afterglow of the Big Bang — with a sensitivity up to ten times greater than that of the previous gold standard, Europe’s Planck space probe.
“It will be the best view of the CMB that we’ve ever had,” says Jo Dunkley, a cosmologist at Princeton University in New Jersey and one of the leading researchers in the observatory’s team. Construction of the US$109.5-million observatory is due to be completed in a matter of weeks.
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