Greenland Telescope

The Greenland Telescope is an innovative research project that will help scientists explore some of the Universe's deepest mysteries, including the use of black holes to study gravity in conditions that cannot be replicated here on Earth.

Some anticipated discoveries for the Greenland Telescope include:

• Participating in imaging the event horizon of a black hole, the point of no return for infalling matter. This feat has never been accomplished.

• Testing Einstein's theory of General Relativity in environments where extreme gravity exists.

• Probing the physics around black holes with unprecedented detail.

The Greenland Telescope project represents a creative way to conduct state-of-the-art science. The 12-meter radio antenna was originally built as a prototype for the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) project, currently in operations in Chile.

By repurposing this telescope to Greenland, astronomers can take advantage of the near-ideal conditions of the Arctic to study the Universe at specific radio frequencies.

The location at National Science Foundation's (NSF) Summit Station enables joint use of critical infrastructure and reduces costs. It also allows triangulation with the Submillimeter Array in Hawaii, ALMA and other radio dishes, to become a part of the Event Horizon Telescope, a project aiming to generate an image of a black hole's shadow for the first time.