{"id":2779,"date":"2026-06-19T14:07:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T14:07:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/durhammovinghub.com\/?p=2779"},"modified":"2026-06-19T14:07:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T14:07:13","slug":"duke-scientist-seeks-answers-to-universes-biggest-mysteries-with-new-telescope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/durhammovinghub.com\/?p=2779","title":{"rendered":"Duke scientist seeks answers to universe\u2019s biggest mysteries with new telescope"},"content":{"rendered":"

AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.<\/p>\n

Read our AI Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u200bBlinding sun, freezing temperatures, and mounds of dust whipping through the air. The air, thin and sharp, makes every breath an effort.<\/p>\n

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In this otherworldly landscape in Chile\u2019s Atacama Desert, Eve Vavagiakis<\/a>, an assistant professor of physics at Duke University, embarks on her lifelong mission: to unravel the universe\u2019s biggest mysteries with a powerful new telescope.<\/p>\n

To most, questions like \u201cHow does anything exist at all?\u201d seem profound and unanswerable. For Vavagiakis, they are a daily pursuit \u2014 one that has shaped her career and her willingness to travel to the ends of the Earth in search of answers.<\/p>\n

After six years in graduate school designing telescope parts to function in freezing temperatures, Vavagiakis finally saw her work come to life atop Cerro Chajnanto, a mountain in the Chilean desert, with the inauguration of the Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope (FYST)<\/a>,<\/u><\/a> a new window into the cosmos.<\/p>\n

The telescope\u2019s heart is Prime Cam<\/a>, a state-of-the-art camera Vavagiakis helped design and an instrument built to capture faint signals from the universe\u2019s earliest moments.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have these room-sized cameras that are made of giant metal shells,\u201d Vavagiakis said in an interview with The News & Observer. \u201cWe put them in this telescope, and so we take pictures, but the pictures are of the oldest light we can observe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vavagiakis\u2019 field is cosmology \u2014 studying the whole universe as a single system.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was an undergraduate, I asked, \u2018How can I study as much physics as possible?\u2019 So studying the entire universe felt all encompassing,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The Atacama\u2019s inhospitable conditions are so severe that it takes medical clearance and supplemental oxygen to reach the telescope.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a reason for this extreme location: water vapor is almost nonexistent. Water absorbs the submillimeter wavelengths the telescope needs to see the universe\u2019s past, so the dry desert air is essential for the science to succeed.<\/p>\n

To peer 13 billion years into the past, the telescope must also be above the clouds: hence, a mountaintop in one of the driest places on Earth.<\/p>\n

While other telescopes, such as the Hubble Space Telescope,<\/u><\/a> have captured striking images of faraway galaxies, they don\u2019t detect the submillimeter light targeted by the FYST. Other submillimeter telescopes<\/u><\/a> in operation sit at lower elevations with more water vapor, so they produce lower quality images.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThis one reveals to us the unseen portion of the universe… It\u2019s basically looking at a baby picture of the universe,\u201d Vavagiakis said.<\/p>\n

Yet, as Vavagiakis points out, cosmology\u2019s images can be deceiving to the untrained eye.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think people don\u2019t understand cosmology as much as other fields in astronomy, partly because the pictures we take don\u2019t look as exciting,\u201d Vavagiakis said. \u201cThis is the same wavelength of light in your microwave, so you can\u2019t see it with your eyeballs. The baby picture of the universe looks like a bunch of noise, but when you look at it, you really are staring at the entire universe and where it came from.\u201d<\/p>\n

The images captured by the FYST will fill in the puzzle pieces left behind by other telescopes.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy revealing parts of the universe that we haven\u2019t revealed yet, we\u2019ll learn about how it evolved,\u201d Vavagiakis said. \u201cIt\u2019s going to give us unique information that we can use to clean up the pictures of the universe that we get with other facilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAscending up to the telescope with the team and seeing it crest around the mountain for the first time\u2026 it definitely feels like arriving someplace in the fullest sense,\u201d Vavagiakis said. \u201cThe scenery is some of the most extreme and breathtaking you will ever see in your life.\u201d<\/p>\n

At that altitude, the whole world smells different.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s so removed from what we have day to day that it actually doesn\u2019t smell like much at all\u2026 it\u2019s this mineral sulfuric, dusty, otherwise very neutral scent, interspersed by the smell of plastic from your cannula that you have to wear to breathe,\u201d Vavagiakis said.<\/p>\n

Spending the last decade on this mission left Vavagiakis with a profound appreciation for the FYST. Still, even as she gazes at the stars, she remains grounded.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing up there, it reminds me about how precious life is on Earth, and how grateful I am to be there, doing anything, let alone astronomy,\u201d Vavagiakis said. \u201cDespite everything, I still tell people all the time, Earth is my favorite planet.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Duke physicist Eve Vavagiakis helps deploy the Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope in Chile\u2019s Atacama Desert to probe the universe\u2019s earliest moments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2778,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-read-todays-edition"],"yoast_head":"\nDuke scientist seeks answers to universe\u2019s biggest mysteries with new telescope - Durham Moving Hub<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/durhammovinghub.com\/?p=2779\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Duke scientist seeks answers to universe\u2019s biggest mysteries with new telescope - 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