How giant mirrors are made for what will be the world’s largest telescope

TUCSON — Hot and dry air, perfused with a scent reminiscent of a warmed hair straightener, stuffed a hangar-sized room beneath the football stadium at the University of Arizona. The space, part of the Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab, was dominated by a gyrating, carousel-sized furnace, fire truck red and shaped like a flying saucer. The swirling cocoon of a colossal light collector.

“It’s making 4.9 revolutions per minute,” says astronomer Buell Januzzi of the University of Arizona, raising his voice over the lab’s droning ventilation system. About half past noon on October 7, after about a week of gradual warming, the temperature inside the rotating machine had finally

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