Science:
Last month NSF officials met with representatives from two
California-based consortia that are interested in building the
next US giant ground-based telescope. The two groups—one
based at Caltech, which is designing the
Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT),
and one at the Carnegie Institution of Science, which is
working on the
Giant Magellan Telescope
(GMT)—may enter into competition for NSF funding of their
projects. Such funding would provide more than just financial
support: It could also be seen as a vote of confidence and
could lead to the securing of additional funding from other
partners, both public and private. However, there has been some
confusion stemming from the language used in a Senate report
that accompanied the proposed 2012 NSF budget; it's directed
that the telescope be "developed ... on domestic soil." Because
the TMT would be built in Hawaii and the GMT in Chile, some
feel that the latter would be automatically disqualified. Such
a qualification was not part of the National Academies' 2010
committee
report,
which had recommended the NSF face-off between the two
projects, according to Roger Blandford of Stanford University,
who chaired the committee.
