1 00:00:15,500 --> 00:00:19,000 This is the best job I've ever had in my life, so far. 2 00:00:19,400 --> 00:00:26,500 And nearly everything has been from the enormous scope of activities that you get exposed to. 3 00:00:27,760 --> 00:00:32,200 When I arrived at ESO, I had been on the ESO Council for four years 4 00:00:32,800 --> 00:00:36,500 and I thought knew reasonably well how it operated. 5 00:00:36,600 --> 00:00:37,800 Well, I did not. 6 00:00:38,200 --> 00:00:41,500 So I learned that we were doing much more than I even knew. 7 00:00:42,000 --> 00:00:48,200 I found many, many interesting things to do and it was an extremely energizing experience 8 00:00:48,400 --> 00:00:53,300 because suddenly you have the opportunity to enable science for the community, 9 00:00:53,800 --> 00:01:03,600 to try to convince high level politicians to support science, astronomy, ESO, but all of them. 10 00:01:03,800 --> 00:01:07,600 You meet very, very interesting people all over the world, 11 00:01:08,650 --> 00:01:14,600 you get involved in things that I did not realise I would get involved in when I started studying astronomy— 12 00:01:14,700 --> 00:01:20,000 I learned a little bit about pouring concrete at 5000 metres altitude. 13 00:01:20,100 --> 00:01:22,600 All of this is just very exciting. 14 00:01:24,800 --> 00:01:32,400 ESO’s role is to build and operate world class facilities for astronomy and to foster collaboration. 15 00:01:32,500 --> 00:01:33,800 So, that’s what we are doing. 16 00:01:35,600 --> 00:01:44,800 ESO has had an interesting role in shaping astronomy ever since its origins in the 1960s, 17 00:01:45,480 --> 00:01:52,980 but in the past decade the strong expansion of the program of ESO, 18 00:01:53,100 --> 00:01:54,700 with state-of-the-art new facilities, 19 00:01:56,000 --> 00:01:59,100 the upgrade of Paranal with second generation instruments, 20 00:01:59,340 --> 00:02:03,740 the start of operations of the ALMA observatory 21 00:02:03,740 --> 00:02:10,600 and now the construction of a really transformational new telescope, the ELT, 22 00:02:11,000 --> 00:02:17,400 has clearly influenced the way astronomy is done today and will be done in the future. 23 00:02:18,000 --> 00:02:24,200 The growth of ESO into a partnership of fifteen countries with more to come, 24 00:02:24,800 --> 00:02:30,600 with a long term budget stability and planning ability, 25 00:02:31,000 --> 00:02:37,600 where lessons learned from previous facilities are being used to build new ones, 26 00:02:38,600 --> 00:02:45,600 has let ESO to become, I believe, the preeminent organisation in astronomy in the world. 27 00:02:48,000 --> 00:02:53,300 Astronomy has changed quite a bit over the past ten years in a number of ways. 28 00:02:53,500 --> 00:02:58,400 The observing facilities have become significantly more powerful, 29 00:02:58,500 --> 00:03:02,200 taking advantage of developments in technology. 30 00:03:02,800 --> 00:03:08,080 At the same time there are many, many astronomers and much more work is being done in big things 31 00:03:08,080 --> 00:03:09,700 than it was maybe ten years ago. 32 00:03:09,700 --> 00:03:13,760 And there’s a more sociological change, which is also quite interesting 33 00:03:13,760 --> 00:03:18,200 and it’s triggered in part by the enormous data streams coming out of these facilities. 34 00:03:19,700 --> 00:03:24,800 Another change that is very evident in the past decade in astronomy 35 00:03:24,800 --> 00:03:31,000 is that the attention is drawn more and more to the search for exoplanets, 36 00:03:31,400 --> 00:03:33,700 planets orbiting other stars. 37 00:03:34,400 --> 00:03:40,500 Not so much even the search, but finding the rocky ones and then asking yourself, 38 00:03:41,300 --> 00:03:42,300 “Do they have atmospheres?”, 39 00:03:42,300 --> 00:03:43,800 “Can we observe them?”, 40 00:03:43,900 --> 00:03:46,780 “Is there evidence for water, liquid water?”, 41 00:03:46,780 --> 00:03:49,280 “Are they in what we call the habitable zone?” 42 00:03:49,300 --> 00:03:50,400 and, indeed, 43 00:03:50,800 --> 00:03:58,300 “Is it possible to detect elements in their atmospheres that betray or are evidence for biological activity, 44 00:03:58,300 --> 00:03:59,300 called life?". 45 00:03:59,780 --> 00:04:08,880 And it is a field that also transcends science because it is of great interest to a large fraction of our society. 46 00:04:09,000 --> 00:04:13,600 We would all deep down like to know, “Is there life elsewhere in the Universe?”. 47 00:04:14,040 --> 00:04:16,520 Asked on Social Media 48 00:04:17,240 --> 00:04:19,460 Which planet would you like to go to? — Michael Hall 49 00:04:20,100 --> 00:04:28,200 If I had the opportunity to take a good look with my own eyes on Mars, I would love it. 50 00:04:29,380 --> 00:04:32,420 Is ESO having a best-practice exchange with other large projects such as the SKA 51 00:04:32,420 --> 00:04:36,000 or the facilities at the South Pole? — Eduardo Ros 52 00:04:36,900 --> 00:04:43,100 ESO is ready to provide its expertise to other projects, if they ask. 53 00:04:43,400 --> 00:04:46,900 After all, we are a non-profit organization. 54 00:04:47,400 --> 00:04:51,500 We are funded by the member states through the taxes they levy, 55 00:04:52,400 --> 00:04:54,600 and therefore, if there is something we learn, 56 00:04:54,700 --> 00:04:59,100 rather if it’s an astronomical result or engineering practice 57 00:04:59,100 --> 00:05:04,300 or some of these more practical issues in how you do things in different countries 58 00:05:04,600 --> 00:05:07,000 or in very remote locations, 59 00:05:07,200 --> 00:05:08,800 we are quite willing to help. 60 00:05:08,800 --> 00:05:09,800 But they have to ask. 61 00:05:10,400 --> 00:05:13,800 Is the amount of data generated with the telescopes getting easier to manage 62 00:05:13,800 --> 00:05:17,600 or is it something that ESO needs to find new ways to face? — Roberto Sanchez Alvarado 63 00:05:18,400 --> 00:05:22,220 If you look at the general field of the physical sciences, 64 00:05:23,200 --> 00:05:28,100 there are facilities that produce what is called big data. 65 00:05:28,300 --> 00:05:33,000 By that standard, ESO’s telescopes do not produce a lot of data. 66 00:05:33,400 --> 00:05:41,000 They produce a fair amount, but not this giant stream that would be very difficult to handle. 67 00:05:41,400 --> 00:05:45,000 And the reason for this is not that difficult to understand. 68 00:05:45,400 --> 00:05:48,600 We take very deep images, for example, 69 00:05:48,700 --> 00:05:53,500 or spectra of objects in the Universe that are very, very faint. 70 00:05:53,500 --> 00:05:56,000 So, we have to expose a long time, 71 00:05:56,300 --> 00:05:58,300 integrate the measurements 72 00:05:58,600 --> 00:06:02,900 and then write on disk the resulting image or spectra. 73 00:06:04,000 --> 00:06:06,900 That doesn’t run into the petabytes every night. 74 00:06:07,600 --> 00:06:10,400 And in that sense, that’s all under control. 75 00:06:10,500 --> 00:06:15,800 It’s growing, but not by the jump that you see in what is called big data. 76 00:06:16,800 --> 00:06:20,400 Will the ELT be able to detect the chemical composition of the atmospheres of exoplanets 77 00:06:20,400 --> 00:06:25,000 and to make direct images of exoplanets down to sizes of 1-1.5 Earth masses? — Adam Tużnik 78 00:06:26,400 --> 00:06:27,800 The short answer is yes. 79 00:06:28,000 --> 00:06:30,000 That is the reason why we are building it, 80 00:06:30,700 --> 00:06:35,400 and that is mostly the reason why we have to take a— 81 00:06:35,400 --> 00:06:37,300 build a mirror that is so big. 82 00:06:38,000 --> 00:06:45,000 What we are trying to see is the reflected light of the host star of a little rock, 83 00:06:45,400 --> 00:06:46,400 an Earth-like planet. 84 00:06:47,500 --> 00:06:52,400 And that light is incredibly much fainter than the light of the star. 85 00:06:53,400 --> 00:06:56,700 So what we try to do, is we have the star and the planet 86 00:06:57,200 --> 00:07:02,400 if you make the mirror bigger, you have a bigger enlargement so you can separate the two, 87 00:07:03,300 --> 00:07:04,800 block the light of the star 88 00:07:05,300 --> 00:07:11,000 and then integrate long enough to get enough reflected light of the planet so you can take a spectrum 89 00:07:11,500 --> 00:07:16,800 and look for lines that maybe tell you there’s methane or ozone or oxygen. 90 00:07:20,160 --> 00:07:25,000 Transcription by ESO, Translation by --