If heat, light and noise pollution continue to grow, a time will come when astronomers would be forced to observe the universe from space. Eminent astrophysicist Jayant Narlikar in The Indian Express:
On a visit to Chile, I had the opportunity of visiting Paranal, a location in the Atacama desert to the north. Paranal is the site of the world’s largest optical telescope system operated by the European Southern Observatory. It has four telescopes, each with a mirror of an eight-metre diameter. So when they work together, they have a light collecting area of around 200 square metre, the size of a large urban flat. Indeed, astronomers have come a long way since four centuries ago Galileo first trained his pioneering telescope of some four-centimetre diameter on the sky.
After a two-hour drive from Antofagasta, through the rocks and sands of the desert, we could see the white domes of the telescopes on a high plateau. However, when the ESO transport set us down in front of the residency or the guest house for the observing astronomers and technicians I could not see any building in front. There was an upside-down dish-like structure covering the ground some 50 metre away and a paved path led to it. There, one encountered a gateway, crossing which, one was transported into something veritably out of science fiction.
