With 300 cloudless nights a year in the Atacama Desert, the country will have 70% of the largest telescopes by 2025 – and attracts big techs like Google and Amazon.
The Atacama Desert is the driest non-polar region on planet Earth. For 500 years there was not a single record of significant rainfall (until two storms occurred in 2015 and 2017). This inhospitable land is proving a gift from nature to Chile. The clear, cloud-free sky 90% of the year attracted an area of just 2,000 square kilometers (30% larger than the city of São Paulo) 40% of the world’s largest optical and infrared telescopes. Participation will reach 70% by 2025, with a tendency to increase further in the future. Space observation has become strategic for technology giants worldwide and the Chilecon Valley – as the Chilean startup scene is called.
Chile hopes to enjoy the new era of space observation and exploration better than it did in the previous one during the Cold War. Two recent academic studies take stock of what the country has gained and lost since 1969, the year when the observatories La Silla (European, ESO) and Las Campanas (American, Carnegie Institution) were installed. The result is controversial. The country has created privileges for space observation, such as infrastructure works and land assignment, as well as tax exemption and environmental impact studies. Only in 1990 (after redemocratization) did the Chilean government impose a counterpart: 10% of the observation time reserved for Chilean researchers. The rule helped research in the country. According to the Chilean Society of Astronomy, since 2000 the number of astronomy-related courses at universities in Chile has increased from 2 to 17, and the number of researchers in this area has grown from 30 to over 900. The subject represents the majority (12%). of the production of scientific articles in the country. Chilean scientists participated in important discoveries, such as the first observation of an exoplanet (2004) and the most Earth-like planet (2017), as well as the first photograph of a black hole (2019).
Source: Época Negócios
