[beebuster2000]

$1 billion, wow. but worth it i bet.

i wonder how they make the glass that large? in pieces that focus on someting like a digital camera or something?

anhyone know how the technology works?

[null and void]

Paragraph 4 of the above excerpt:

The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) will have a primary mirror of 492 segments

[GGpaX4DumpedTea]

Mauna Kea is a volcano. One eruption, telescope and $1 billion dollars gone...of course that is a better deal than any of Obama’s bailouts.

[smokingfrog]

i wonder how they make the glass that large?

Very carefully!

[Psychotic Break]

i wonder how they make the glass that large? in pieces that focus on someting like a digital camera or something?

Hexagonal segments which are actively warped into the appropriate shape down to 10's of nanometers.

[Jack Hydrazine]

They make the primary mirror in 492 hexagonally-shaped pieces that are 1.4 meters/4.6 feet in diameter.

This is why it is called a segmented mirror reflecting telescope.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Meter_Telescope