The black box set to revolutionize the search for life beyond Earth (https://phys.org/news/2018-02-black-revolutionize-life-earth.html)
QuoteIn the world's driest desert, an unassuming black box called "Espresso" is about to begin a very big mission: scouring the universe for planets like ours to find signs of life beyond Earth.
Espresso, an instrument known as a spectrograph, has a humble appearance that belies its cutting-edge technology: it is the most precise instrument of its kind ever built, 10 times stronger than its most powerful predecessor...
Strong stuff. The science, not the coffee.
Wow, a performance up-jump of ten is quite a lot!
Betcha they drink lots of strong coffee during the night shift (so long as its nowhere near the gear.)
Bad ass! Spectrograph is one of the most valuable tools astronomy/cosmology/astrophysics has. This thing is gonna show us things we've never seen before. Looking forward to that. I think they're going to plug it into the VLT. Hmmm.... I wonder if it can operate on different wavelengths too.