Science: Biggest Telescope

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Humming at their work, astronomers and technicians were busy again at Mt. Palomar Observatory, Calif. The great 200-inch mirror, neglected during the war, was still far from completion. But soon the grinders and polishers would be working at its delicate surface. Meanwhile, a concrete disc of the same diameter and weight (18 tons) was doubling for the mirror in the almost finished largest-telescope-in-the-world, while final tests were made on its intricate controls. In another year, or perhaps two, Mt. Palomar would be open for business.

The stars and nebulae are no longer mere objects of idle intellectual curiosity: they are giant laboratories now, the setting for studies in that newly important science: nuclear physics.