How 5,000 Pencil
Pencil-Size
Size Robots May
Solve the Mysteries of the Universe
The
5,000
pencil-size
size
robots will fit snugly inside
10
wedge-shaped
shaped
petals. Here, one of
those wedges is fully
stocked with 500 robots,
each of which will swivel
independently to gather
light from a known group
of
space
objects,
including
distant
galaxies.
The Nicholas U. Mayall Telescope in Arizona closed earlier this February
to prepare for the installation of a 9
9-ton
ton device that will feature 5,000
pencil-size robots aiming fiber
fiber-optic
optic sensors at distant galaxies
A 45-year-old
old telescope is
going to get a high-tech
tech
upgrade that will enable it
to search for answers to the
most perplexing questions in
astronomy, including the
existence of dark energy, a
hypothetical invisible force
that might be driving the
expansion of the universe. Dark Energy Spectroscopic
Instrument (DESI) — to
capture a new portion of
the sky. Ten extremely
powerful
instruments
called spectrographs will
then analyze the light from
the
distant
objects
captured by the sensors
and create
Every 20 minutes, the
swiveling
robots
will
reposition to allow the
instrument — called the what has been described
as the largest and most
detailed 3D map of the
universe to date.
"We
started
with
a
conceptual design for the
instrument in 2010," Joseph
Silber, a DESI project engineer
who works at the University of
California's Lawrence Berkeley
Laboratory,
said
in
a
statement. "It's based on
science that was done
d
on the
Baryon
Oscillation
Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS)
instrument. But it's all done
robotically
instead
of
manually."
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