And when its aluminium coating is replaced with silver in a year or two's time (a huge vacuum-chamber housed at the telescope's base will be used to deposit metallic vapour on to the mirror's reflecting surface), it will be able to see into the infra-red with equal clarity, opening up a much neglected area of astronomy.

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The base station simulator should have been also sitting outside the chamber and had a calibrated antenna plumbed to it from inside the chamber.

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The transistor itself is composed of a single phosphorous-31 isotope, which has been precisely placed on a base of silicon using a Scanning Tunneling Microscope in an ultra-high vacuum chamber.

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