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ALMA Groundbreaking Ceremony Presentations
Ricardo Giaconni, AUI President
I have been asked to make a brief statement about the scientific
significance of the event we celebrate here today. The exciting
discoveries in astronomy and astrophysics of the last decade and the great
technological advances in astronomical instrumentation hold the promise
that in the beginning of this new millennium we will take a giant step
forward in our understanding of the cosmos. In the last decade we have,
for the first time, discovered the existence of numerous planets around
stars other than the sun; we have peered at the very edge of the visible
universe only a few hundred thousand years after the big bang to study the
seeds of galaxy formation; we have found evidence of a new form of energy
that might be the largest constituent of the universe. We have found that
galaxies and clusters of galaxies were formed much earlier than we had
thought and that most galaxies (including our own) harbor massive black
holes. The study of black hole physics and of the phenomena occurring in a
ray burst sources has made great advances and holds the promise to test
theories of gravity, including general relativity, under strong field
conditions. For the first time we have detected neutrinos from a supernova
explosion and extended astrophysical observations of specific phenomena to
particle detection.
An ambitious plan of study has emerged for the next twenty or thirty years
which combines the study of the extremely large with that of the extremely
small. To understand the universe we need to further advance our knowledge
of the fundamental laws of physics and of the elementary constituents of
matter. The universe itself is becoming the laboratory where the very high
energies, high densities, and strong fields provide the testing ground for
these new laws. This plan anticipates the development of new and more
powerful observational facilities in all the wavelengths of the
electromagnetic spectrum, as well as particle detectors, through
international collaborations on a scale never seen before. ALMA will be at
the forefront of these facilities and hopefully will provide a model for
such collaborative efforts. ALMA observations will serve to elucidate many
of the most important questions in astrophysics today.
ALMA will permit us to study the distant universe and observe the first
seeds of galaxy formation and the subsequent galaxy evolution. It will
have the required sensitivity, resolution and bandwidth to observe the
small scale anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background imprinted by
the initial fluctuations at Z ~ 100 and the distortions due to the
Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect in clusters of galaxies. Together with X-ray
observation this will permit direct measurement of the size and curvature
of the universe.
ALMA will have unsurpassed sensitivity and imaging capabilities for
molecular spectroscopic study of external galaxies and will be able to
detect the first galaxies formed through their dust emission at Z > 20. It
will be able to study star formation cores in nearby galaxies and assess
the role of morphology and environment in their dynamic and chemical
evolution. The siting of ALMA in the southern hemisphere will permit
detailed studies of the large and small Magellanic clouds. The study of
organic molecules in interstellar space will provide indispensable clues
to the origin of life in the universe.
ALMA will offer unique capabilities to study super massive black holes in
all galaxies including our own. With the same angular resolution of the
Hubble Space Telescope, ALMA can resolve the disks fueling the central
black holes in galaxies as far as Virgo and yield geometry, physical
conditions and kinematics of the gas. Finally if used as the prime
component in a world wide millimeter wave VLBT network, ALMA would allow
us to map the structure of active galactic nuclei with a resolution of 10
micro arc seconds, the highest resolution achievable in astronomy. Thus
ALMA will contribute to the all wavelength attack on the fundamental
problems of the origin of the universe, of development of structures and
possibly of organic life.
I would like to conclude with a very brief personal remark. I consider
myself extremely fortunate in having lived in this epoch of advances in
astronomy not equaled since the time of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Tycho
and Newton. I was privileged in being associated with some of the great
enterprises in our field: the start of X-ray astronomy and the development
of Chandra, the operation of the Hubble Space Telescope, the development
of the Very Large Telescope on Paranal and now the start of the ALMA
Project. In some of my recent papers I found myself using data from
Chandra, HST and VLT to clarify, after forty years of work, the mystery of
the X-ray background. Still some of the X-ray sources we observe in the
deepest survey are so faint that neither HST nor VLT can identify them,
and they may well be new types of celestial objects. I hope ALMA will be
able to solve this new mystery in my lifetime. I would like to end by
thanking our host, Chile, for joining us in this noble voyage of discovery
and making this enchanted land the home for some of the most important of
these great enterprises.
Me gustaría concluir agradeciendo a nuestro anfitrión, Chile, el haberse
unido a nosotros en este noble viaje de descubrimiento, haciendo esta
tierra encantada el hogar de algunas de las mas importantes de estas
grandes aventuras. Muchas gracias!
Modified on Monday, 05-Jan-2004 12:28:51 EST
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