The U.S. and Mexico Are About to Look Back Together in Time

In the biggest Mexico-U.S. scientific venture ever, builders are finishing a monster telescope that will let astronomers look back 13 billion years and uncover secrets about the creation of the universe.

President Vicente Fox and Mexico’s scientific community have championed the telescope, the largest of its kind in the world, saying it shows how a developing country can play a major role in cutting-edge technology.

Yet the fact that most of the U.S. funding comes from the Defense Department has some Mexicans worried. They are leery of any military connections with their powerful northern neighbor.

“We want Mexico to be in the vanguard of scientific advance, but it would be better if all the money came from nonmilitary sources,” said Rosa Maria Aviles, a lawmaker who is a member of the congressional Science and Technology Committee. “We are a pacifist nation.”

U.S. and Mexican scientists say that the Pentagon often funds scientific projects so it can use the technology but that the actual telescope will have no direct military use.

With a 165-foot antenna and a price tag of nearly $120 million, the scope dwarfs any scientific endeavor Mexico has been involved in before.

The gleaming white structure, which looks like a gigantic satellite dish, sits atop the freezing-cold summit of 15,000-foot Sierra Negra, an extinct volcano in the southeast-central state of Puebla. Sierra Negra is one of six Mexican volcanoes that are higher than any peaks in the continental United States.

Operating above cloud level, the telescope will pick up millimeter-long radio waves that have been traveling through space for nearly 13 billion years. Astronomers will use the information to plot the most detailed maps ever of stars and galaxies as they existed shortly after the big bang.

“We will get incredible new insight into how galaxies were first formed,” said project scientist David Hughes of Mexico’s National Institute of Astrophysics, Optics and Electronics. “Once we start operating, we should be making breakthrough discoveries on an almost daily basis.”

Scientists also will be able to collect new data on nearer galaxies such as Andromeda and examine all its stars and planets to see what may lurk there.

The telescope will be ready for testing in May and will be fully operational by the end of 2007, construction director Emanuel Mendez said.

The U.S. has invested $38 million in the project, $31 million of that from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, the Pentagon’s central research and development organization.

The Senate Armed Services Committee first allocated the agency’s funding for the telescope in 1995, when the project was in its infancy. In a report that year, the committee wrote that the “design could greatly improve the capability” to find and recognize targets in space.

Translation: Since the telescope is essentially a giant antenna with sensors to pick up radio waves, the military could use knowledge gleaned in building the instrument to create antennas for its own uses, said Peter Schloerb, the U.S. project scientist for the telescope.

“The military may want to use antennas for space surveillance,” said Schloerb, of the University of Massachusetts. “It is a way to figure out what everybody is doing up there.”

Though the telescope is designed to pick up radio waves that have traveled vast distances through space, the technology also could be used to build antennas that pick up the same waves much closer to home, said John Pike, director of the military information website globalsecurity.org.

“Millimeter-wave sensor technology has the potential to locate camouflaged objects on the ground or help guide missiles,” Pike said.

Silvia Torres, an astronomer at Mexico’s National Autonomous University, said she had no problem with U.S. military investments in Mexican scientific research as long as it wasn’t for specific military projects.

“There has always been an interaction between the scientific and military communities,” Torres said. “It is important to get investment here. We have a lot of talented young scientists and a good geography for instruments like telescopes.”

Defense Department money has helped create a number of civilian-use innovations, including the Internet.

Construction of the telescope has been a real challenge for the Mexican and U.S. builders, who are working at 15,000 feet. Because of the altitude, they are tested regularly to see if they have enough oxygen in their blood, and are rushed down the mountain if their levels drop too far.

The team needed a whopping 13,000 tons of concrete brought up the dirt road that winds around the volcano. Hundreds of villagers were hired to bring up the materials in their compact cars, helping to put a dent in the unemployment rate of one of Mexico’s poorest areas.

At the beginning, the vehicles couldn’t reach the summit, so villagers used mules, said Mendez, the construction director.

“Mules are fantastic at navigating mountains,” he said. “They are the best road engineers in the world.”