A Telescope Farm on the Moon? Maybe

March 19, 2008 -- Astronomers looking for a clear and quiet place from which to map the faintest echoes from the universe's infancy may have found a welcome mat on the far side of the moon.

A farm of lunar radio telescopes is among 19 next-generation observatories that intrigued NASA enough to garner a combined $12 million for a year-long study.

The idea, proposed by a team of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, takes advantage of the atmosphere-free lunar environment.

The array would be located on the side of the moon facing away from Earth to assure that the ultra-low-frequency radio waves whispering from the universe's earliest years can be heard over earthlings' ubiquitous broadcast chatter.

Scientists don't know much about what happened in the billion years or so between when the universe was born in the fantastic and still unexplained massive explosion known as the Big Bang and when its youngest galaxies and structures emerged.

The gestation period is shrouded in darkness -- literally. Scientists believe dark matter, which accounts for most of the universe's mass, condensed from the primordial gas present at the moment of the universe's creation, creating the blueprint for everything that has appeared since.

"Probing the Dark Ages presents the opportunity to watch the young universe evolve," said Joseph Lazio, with the Washington, D.C.-based Naval Research Laboratory, which is sharing a $500,000 NASA study grant with MIT for another lunar observatory.

MIT's Lunar Array for Radio Cosmology, known as LARC, would hone in on this time with hundreds of small telescopes sensitive to very low-frequency radio waves dating back to this cosmic dark era.

The array, which would cover up to two square kilometers (0.8 square miles), would be assembled by robots.