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The ALMA radio telescope facility (Atacama Large Millimetre / submillimetre Array), positioned high up on Atacama's Chajnantor plateau, in Chile's Atacama Desert, has put its 16th 12m-dish in place and is now ready to start conducting some serious scientific observations. Although this is only the 16th or an eventual 66 antennae, it still gives Alma an unrivalled opportunity to start observing the 'cool Universe' (all the gas and dust that builds stars and planets) as well as events in the very early cosmos that are beyond the detection of current technologies.

Alma is a co-operative venture that includes the scientific and engineering inputs of Europe, East Asia, North America and the host nation, Chile. This 16th antenna, including all its related receiver systems and electronics, is the first of the project to have been created in Europe.

Alma uses its multiple antennae to detect millimetre and submillimetre signals from the sky, which are then combined via interferometry to enable Alma to mimic the capabilities of a single, giant antenna with a diameter equal to the distance between the dishes. The current 16-antennae configuration spans 400m, when the the project is completed in 2013, this will have grown to an enormous 15km!

In an interview with BBC News Dr John Richer, the UK Alma project scientist based at Cambridge University described how: "Alma doesn't have quite the same profile as, say, the Large Hadron Collider and it doesn't have the same price tag, nonetheless, it is the most complex observatory ever constructed on the ground in terms of its engineering and scale.

"We're doing this because we believe it will have commensurate scientific returns. Over the next 20 years, Alma will deliver an incredible wealth of new discoveries."

You can read the full story on the BBC News website.