As the scientist community wishes to explore the farthest away spatial bodies, their urge for erecting bigger and better telescopes gets growing! But erection of mighty, scientific and automated telescopes is no easy task - they require funds to be poured in like water, along with human efforts. Owing to this reason, world’s first 4 meter wide liquid-mirror telescope based observatory is going to be erected in India by 2009. The International Liquid Mirror Telescope is going to be funded by Belgium and Canada and would be located on a mountaintop. Conceptually, liquid-mirror are based on simple property of fluid dynamics - spin a pool of fluid till it coincidentally rearranges itself to an exact parabolic shape, same as the glass mirror used for observation. These telescopes cost one-tenth of their glass-mirror counterparts of the same size and time required to erect them is also significantly low.
However, liquid-mirror telescopes do have their own setbacks. First and the foremost is they can be used only for straight observation - the sky exactly at 90 degrees from the observer. Secondly, the construction of huge sizes may cause a problem. But even then, owing to their cost-effectiveness many proposals are coming forward from across the world. Arlin Crotts of Columbia University in New York, is planning to erect an 8-meter wide telescopes. Proposals even suggest to erect 20 to 100 meter diameter telescopes on moon.
Ermanno Borra of Laval University in Quebec City, Canada, and his colleagues are developing high viscosity reflective liquids that could allow liquid mirrors to tilt up to 30 degrees. With these improvements, liquid-mirrors may replace the conventional telescopes within few years.
Source: NewScientist
