ALMA Little Universe ALMA Observatory

ALMA Little Universe - A micro podcast about the world's largest ground-based astronomical observatory.

From the Atacama Desert in Northern Chile, we can observe the light of distant galaxies hidden behind stardust and images of the early origins of the Universe.All this and much more has been made possible through the 66 giant antennas that make up a unique radio telescope that has come to revolutionize astronomy. Let's discover the little Universe of ALMA and begin this journey towards the origins of the Cosmos.

The human eye can only see a small portion of the light within the Universe. But the elements of the Cosmos emit in a wide range of wavelengths. Thus, it has been only through engineering that scientists have been able to see the light that our eyes can't see.
In this episode, the Italian radio frequency engineer Giorgio Siringo explains how ALMA has made it possible to see a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that was hidden from us until recently and why scientists from all over the world want to come to the Atacama Desert, the driest nonpolar desert of the world, to do their researches.

Using ALMA to do research and explore the Universe has a worldwide benefit". Nevertheless, there is a limit to scientific projects that the observatory can be involved in. In this episode, Observatory Scientist John Carpenter explains to us how, each year, ALMA receives proposals from researchers from all over the world and the mechanisms used to select the ones that are going to gaze at the Cosmos.

The construction cost of ALMA is estimated at over a billion US dollars, and every year of operation involves millions of dollars of investment and resources. Twenty-one countries from all around the world have collaborated to make this feat happen. In this episode, Cristian Puentes, ALMA Director of Finance and Administration, will explain to us how they manage the investments from many countries' public money in benefit to the pursuit of knowledge about the Cosmos that is revolutionizing astronomy.

Sixty-six antennas working together made possible the operation of ALMA Observatory.
How can this telescope in the Atacama Desert see a whole part of the Cosmos that could not be seen before? In this episode, Emilio Barrios, the Array Operations Manager working at ALMA since 2008, explains why there are three antennas and how they interact with their receivers to get weak signals from the Universe.
Furthermore, let's know how this revolutionary radio telescope, which allows us to see a previously unreachable part of the Cosmos, came to be due to the efforts of engineers and scientists worldwide.