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[Bárbara] As an astronomer,
I always marvel at the night sky.

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It’s beautiful, of course,

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but light from the Universe also
helps us unlock its secrets.

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My name is Bárbara Rojas-Ayala
and I study stars.

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Almost every star we see

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hosts one or more planets, and
we’re finding more planets all the time.

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So for me, the night sky is filled

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not with distant, lonely stars,
but with countless families of planets.

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I want to share some family stories

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with you, where they come from,
how they take shape.

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But I also want to introduce you
to where I come from.

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A place where astronomers study the sky

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with the help of amazing technology
and even more amazing people.

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A place where people have experienced

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a strong connection to the night sky
for millennia.

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I want to introduce you
to astronomy in Chile.

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Chile lies on the West Coast
of South America.

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A long, narrow, mountainous country.

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The Pacific Ocean lies to the west,

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the towering Andes Mountains to the east,
and the Amazon rainforest to the north.

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Chile is perhaps the best place

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in the world for observational astronomy
because of its special climate.

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The Andes block rain clouds from the east,

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while currents in the Pacific Ocean bring
cold waters north from the Antarctic.

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Along the Chilean Coast,

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the air temperature drops, and as the cool
air sinks, it loses its moisture.

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These factors combine to create stable,
dry air over Chile’s coastal mountains

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with few clouds,
perfect conditions for astronomy.

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Many major telescopes dot
Chile’s mountainous terrain.

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We will visit just three.

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These observatories are looking at places
in our Solar System and beyond

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to help astronomers understand where
planets like ours come from.

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Standing on the side of this mountain,
you can understand why it was named

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Cerro Tololo, which in the Aymara language
means, “At the Edge of the Abyss.”

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Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory
is home to dozens of telescopes.

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Let’s take a look at the largest,
the Victor M. Blanco Telescope

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with a primary mirror
four meters in diameter.

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Astronomers designed this telescope

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to observe the same kind
of light our eyes can see.

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It’s an optical telescope.

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Light enters the large opening
and bounces off the giant mirror.

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It’s the first thing the light hits,
so we call it the primary mirror.

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The bigger the mirror,
the more light it can collect.

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Astronomers build large telescopes

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to gather as much light as possible.

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The shape of the mirror focuses light
on a giant lens more than a meter across.

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That lens is part of an instrument
called the Dark Energy Camera.

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[Marco] The camera 
has 62 science detectors,

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one of the biggest cameras
in use in the world right now.

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[Bárbara] Marco Bonati is the first person

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of several we’ll meet who keep
these observatories running.

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As an Electronics Detector Engineer,

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he’s responsible for what
happens inside the instrument.

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[Marco]
You have to be careful they are clean

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all the time, because otherwise
you have all sorts of stuff

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depositing on the surface,
and the surface is especially coated.

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Basically, we want to avoid
any dust particles.

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So in the clean room,
we have a controlled environment.

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We can control the amount of dust inside

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by basically having filters and positive
pressure that keeps the dust out.

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All the light that the telescope gathers
goes to a single point, basically.

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At this point, you put the detector.

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So the detector you put there

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depends on the science you want to do,
and the instrument, a lot of factors.

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[Bárbara]
Once the instrument leaves the clean room

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and is mounted on the telescope,
other team members make the observations.

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[Jacqueline] My name is Jacqueline Seron.
I work at Cerro Tololo Observatory.

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My position is Night Assistant.

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This means taking care of the instrument
and having the telescope ready,

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taking calibrations, and making
sure that everything is working fine.

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And during the night,
operating the telescope,

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which means moving the telescope
to the position that the observer wants

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and making sure that everything
is working correctly.

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What I really like is to learn in general
how a telescope works, how it takes data,

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and all of these different systems
that are interconnected,

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and that accomplish such a huge task,
all the engineering involved.

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It’s amazing.

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[Bárbara] Let’s hear from Kathy Vivas,
a Venezuelan astronomer living in Chile.

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[Kathy] I am part of the support team
of one instrument in the Blanco Telescope,

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the Dark Energy Camera,
which is a wonderful instrument.

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It’s especially designed to make surveys
that cover a large portion of the sky.

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As part of the support team,
we make sure that the camera

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produces science-quality data
for astronomers all around the world

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to come and do their science projects
with the telescope.

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So they can achieve their science goals
with this instrument.

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[Jacqueline and Kathy speaking Spanish]

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[Bárbara]
The Dark Energy Camera was designed

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to peer into the farthest reaches
of the Universe.

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But because it observes a large portion

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of the sky, it also helps us search
for objects much closer to home.

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Leaving Earth behind, we see
the orbits of planets around the Sun.

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Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars.

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Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

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But our solar system includes
many other objects, not just planets.

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Astronomers have used
the Dark Energy Camera to find

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numerous, small icy bodies
in the outer Solar System.

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We have tracked thousands of objects
residing far away from the sun,

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past the most distant planet, Neptune.

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They make up what’s called
the Kuiper Belt.

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Billions of years ago, everything we see
likely revolved in the same plane.

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But the massive planets’ gravity

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tugged the tiny Kuiper Belt objects
into different orbits.

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They now travel far above and below
the plane of the planet’s orbits.

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Each tiny icy world we discover

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helps us answer questions about
the history of our Solar System.

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How did it look billions of years ago
when the planets were taking shape?

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We can’t go back in time.

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But we can observe other planets
in the process of forming.

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This demands our most powerful telescopes,
so let’s return to Chile.

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We’re heading to a mountain
called Cerro Pachón,

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only about 20 kilometers
from Cerro Tololo.

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Here we find the Gemini South Observatory,
which began viewing the sky in 2002.

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Inside the dome,

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we can see the giant telescope mirror,
more than eight meters across

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More than twice the diameter
of the Blanco Telescope.

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This mirror must remain highly reflective,

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which means it needs cleaning every week.

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Such a big job requires teamwork.

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[Vanessa]
My name is Vanessa Montes.

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I’m an electronics engineer.

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We have different disciplines,

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like optics, mechanics,
electrical, software also.

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We all work very well.

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It’s a lot of team effort and
a lot of collaboration.

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And I think that’s very positive,
the more you can encourage people

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to participate more creatively
in the different projects that we do.

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It’s a more collaborative
work environment.

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[Bárbara] Cooperation on Gemini
extends around the globe.

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Astronomers rarely travel
to Chile to use the telescope.

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Instead, they telecommute.

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Here in the Gemini base facility

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in the coastal town of La Serena,
nearly 100 kilometers from Cerro Pachón,

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technicians operate a special instrument
that looks at young planetary systems

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called the Gemini Planet Imager or GPI.

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Almost 10,000 kilometers away
at Stanford University in California,

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observers see the same displays
and guide the work with GPI.

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Astronomers need somebody they trust
on the other end of the line.

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And that’s where Alysha Shugart,
Science Operations Specialist, comes in.

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[Alysha]
We operate the telescope at night.

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We take data for the astronomers who
have contributed proposals for science.

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I really enjoy observing.

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I think about it as if these photons,
literally billions of years old,

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are arriving, and I’m seeing
them for the first time.

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[Bárbara]
Not all photons are billions of years old.

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Many were created more recently
closer to home.

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Light detected by GPI reveals what happens
when planets form around nearby stars.

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We can imagine traveling
to one such place,

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so far away that its light
takes more than 60 years to reach us.

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This star is more massive and
much brighter than the Sun.

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The star and its planetary system
are less than 30 million years old.

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Mere infants, compared to our own,
middle-aged solar system.

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Dust and debris form a disk
around the star.

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Some tiny objects in this disk

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will end up like our Kuiper Belt,
icy bodies at the edge of the system.

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GPI allows us to peer
into the center of the disk.

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Astronomers then use computers

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and the laws of physics to simulate
what might be happening.

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We have discovered one giant planet,
a dozen times more massive than Jupiter,

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whose gravity has sculpted
the dusty disk into a warped spiral.

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Could something similar have happened in
our solar system billions of years ago?

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For the next part of the story,
we must now travel

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to Chile’s Atacama Desert,
one of the driest places on Earth.

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Home to a collection of 66 radio antennas,

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the Atacama Large Millimeter /
Submillimeter Array, or ALMA.

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The skies of the Atacama Desert
are famously clear.

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And people have observed the sky
from here for millennia.

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David Barrera is President

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of the Indigenous Community
of San Pedro de Atacama.

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[David]
I feel that the cosmos walks with me.

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It walks with you, with humanity.

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It is part of our life.

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We humans are nothing
compared to the great cosmos.

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That is why we are part of the cosmos.

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We walk together,

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we make up a single unit, that is
the marvel of human understanding.

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ALMA has been a respectful neighbor
because it has asked,

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what is the ancient wisdom
of native people in regard to the cosmos?

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And ALMA’s invitation
to the Indigenous community

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is to unite scientific knowledge
with Indigenous knowledge.

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[Bárbara] At this unique spot on Earth,
astronomers built an array of antennas

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that benefit from the clear, dry skies
5,000 meters above sea level.

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These giant antennas work together

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like a single, enormous eye, observing
the sky in unprecedented detail,

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and they can work both night and day.

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Each dish weighs about 100 tons

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and they need to move from place to place,

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to make different kinds of observations
and to receive maintenance when needed.

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Alfredo Elgueta is one of only four people

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trusted to operate the transporters
that move the telescopes.

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[Alfredo] The transporter has 
one basic job it is designed to do,

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to move this big radio telescope
from one point to another.

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When you’re doing the maneuver

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of loading or unloading the antenna,
you have to do it with the remote.

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But when you’re doing the translation

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from one point to another,
you have to do it from the cabin.

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So every time that an antenna needs

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a big fixing or anything,
we try to bring it down.

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But it takes a lot
of coordination to do that.

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It takes around five hours
driving five kilometers per hour.

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[Bárbara] Once the antennas are
in their correct locations,

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they collect a huge amount of data.
And they work as a network.

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Data from each antenna is compared
to data from every other one.

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Celia Verdugo, an astronomer
and data analyst,

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collects and studies these observations
for astronomers from around the world.

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[Celia]
The kind of light we are collecting

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is emitted in radio wavelengths.

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We are looking at the parts of the
Universe with the lowest temperature.

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And because of that low temperature,
they emit their energy as radio waves.

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We collect that signal.

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And from that, we can get either

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spectral information or images
of the source we have found.

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We are taking data for projects that
are breaking the limits of what we know.

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Going beyond the limit of our knowledge,
that is really fascinating.

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[Bárbara] One of the ways ALMA
revolutionizes our view of the Universe

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is by giving us a closeup look
at young planetary systems.

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Here, we are seeing not just
the leftovers of planet formation,

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but the actual disk of material
from which planets take shape.

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This is ALMA’s image of PDS 70,

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a very young star,
less than 10 million years old.

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Its debris disk looks like a ring
of dust around the star

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with a large gap where at least one
Jupiter-sized planet is forming.

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The planet has a small disk of its own
where moons could be forming around it.

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Here, we’re seeing the results
of a computer simulation

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which we can compare with data
from ALMA and other telescopes

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to help astronomers understand
how planets grow.

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Perhaps our solar system looked like this
billions of years ago,

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a family of planets taken shape.

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Pioneering work in astronomy

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requires investing in
the next generation of telescopes.

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When completed, this
telescope will observe

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the entire visible sky every few nights.

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It will generate 20 terabytes
of data each night,

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twice what the Hubble Space Telescope
generates in a whole year.

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All the data will be freely available,

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enabling anybody to make
the next great discovery.

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The future of astronomy
lies in all our hands.

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That’s why I enjoy meeting
with students of all ages.

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I hope some of them will grow up
to work with me

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00:22:37,000 --> 00:22:42,640
at one of Chile’s great observatories
or elsewhere in the world.

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All of us you met today come
from different backgrounds

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with many different talents
and skills to contribute.

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We invite everybody to look,
to learn, and to enjoy astronomy.

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We hope to share the wonder of the sky

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and excitement of discovery
with the whole world.

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If you’d like to meet more amazing people

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and hear more stories about Big Astronomy
in Chile, visit bigastronomy.org,

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where you will find live conversations
with observatory staff,

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00:23:48,720 --> 00:23:52,840
exclusive behind-the-scenes content,
and educational activities.

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♪ (music) ♪