In the Atacama Desert, Chile, the European Southern Observatory, which operates the Very Large Telescope – one of the most powerful telescopes in the world – is threatened by “Inna”, a green hydrogen megaproject. Scientists worry about the future of “ purest sky in the world » while a new, even more powerful telescope project, the Extremely Large Telescope, is under construction.
We owe him in particular the first image taken of an exoplanet in 2004, his participation in the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics research on the acceleration of the expansion of the universe or that on the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics, the Very Large Telescope (VLT) is one of the most efficient terrestrial astronomical installations.
It is for this exceptional position that the 16 European countries members of the intergovernmental organization have invested billions of euros in this complex. But today, the largest observatory in the world – which is also preparing to host the Extremely Large Telescope, an even larger device still under construction – is threatened by a green hydrogen project. At the end of December, AES Andes, a subsidiary of the American electricity company AES Corporation, announced an environmental impact study for a megaproject to produce hydrogen and green ammonia just a few kilometers from astronomical infrastructure.
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