Canucks are at the Forefront of Science... Yet Again.

According to Yahoo! News, the Engineering firm, Amec, is proposing to build the world's largest telescope, which will be approximately 30 meters in diameter. This is considerably larger than the Hubble Space Telescope.

What perplexes me is why they are building this telescope as a land-based structure, and not one that will be space-borne. Certainly, putting a satellite into orbit is a much more costly endeavor, but you eliminate many problems that are associated with surface-based telescopes.

For instance, distortion. The atmosphere and magnetosphere make it difficult to clearly see celestial objects even during the best of conditions. A space-based telescope eliminates these problems.

In addition, building a surface-based telescope eliminates a number of problems as well. Maintenance of the structure costs considerably less. There were unforeseen problems with the Hubble telescope, in which they had to "fix" it with a pair of very expensive "glasses".

What I found most interesting, is that John Halladay, vice president of Amec, stated that we can already see to the end of the universe; but the construction of this telescope will allow us to see the end much clearer.

Space is a very strange thing. It curves; it expands; and it is time. Yes, the most bizarre concept us apes have to wrap our heads around is the fact that time is space, and space is time. And when we look deep into space, we are actually seeing what the universe looked like millions, even billions of years ago.

So when Halladay stated we can see to the edge of the universe, it doesn't really mean that we can see the edge of the universe as it exists today. Space curves upon itself; it expands much in the same way that you blow up a balloon, with everything in the universe inside it. Space is more complicated than that, because it curves in four dimensions, and we really cannot understand its' shape, since us apes really can't see in four dimensions. What Halladay really means, is that we can see to the beginning of time.

Physicists are fascinated by the Big Bang -- the beginning of the universe. In fact, we know what the universe looked like even after the first millionth of a second after the creation of the universe... Maybe even the first billionth of a second. But we have no idea what the universe looked like at the time of the Big Bang; nor any time before that. We can only postulate.

It's one of those questions that will never be answered; just like how we wonder if there is life after death, or how they get the Caramel into the Caramilk bar.