Six UK universities will help to deliver a major upgrade to the cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiment known as Simons Observatory (SO).
The SO is located in the high Atacama Desert in Northern Chile inside the Chajnator Science Preserve, at an altitude of 5,200 meters.
The facility, alongside the Atacama Cosmology Telescope and the Simons Array have goals to study how the universe began, what it is made of, and how it evolved to its current state.
The CMB is the trail of heat left by the Big Bang, and studying its tiny fluctuations help scientists to understand how the universe was formed and how matter was distributed shortly after the event.
Prior to the new UK contribution, SO was comprised of a single large aperture telescope and 3 small aperture telescopes.
Observations with SO promise to provide further breakthrough discoveries that will help us understand how the Big Bang led to the formation of stars and galaxies.
The small aperture telescopes...