Both these projects, the GMT Giant Magellan Telescope and ours, the TM, are ready to be advanced to the final design phase. So that's kind of a formal thing within NSF. You're in preliminary design, and we have been. You have a preliminary design review, and we did. And then after some contemplation, the NSF could, if they wish, advance you to the final design phase. So we're hoping they'll do that soon. I would say there's been a lot of activity in Washington that has occupied the NSF people with other matters, you know, in the in the last few weeks. Nevertheless, I think we're on course to, hear from them before too long.

And of all the topics, you know, that TMT is capable of unraveling in the universe?

They wrote up, ten years ago, a detailed science plan that said, here are the things we're gonna do. And this is taken very seriously by the engineering crew. They said, well, if you want to do this, that, and the other, what does the telescope have to do? And so they wrote specifications for the telescope based on doing the science. Perhaps you're familiar with this concept. But that was ten years ago, and it's fair enough to ask how much has science changed in ten years. Honestly, my special field, the field of, dark energy and cosmic expansion hasn't changed very much. But a field that has totally blossomed, of course, is exoplanets, the discovery of planets around other stars. So we wanted to make sure that even with the new understanding and the broader set of questions and kind of what we do know and don't know, that the telescope is still on the path to being powerful for that work.

So we did that. And, that was a very healthy exercise. We got over 200 people to help fix this old report. You won't be too surprised to learn that we concluded that the telescope is going to be able to do these new things very, very well. But but thinking farther down the line, this telescope is not for ten years or, you know, it's for fifty years. And so it's a matter of getting the science for today and then the potential for science for tomorrow. Because if you think about it, the technology also is advancing. So it's not just the science, but the technology for detectors and everything is getting, better.

And we are going to be in a position sooner or later, to have a second generation of instruments and to keep on making this telescope right up at the technological frontier. You know, if you think about, Palomar, we drove by

Yeah.

Poolsonside or wherever it was there. And I thought, gee, that's right downhill from from Palomar. That telescope was built in 1950. You know, still, it had led the world for quite a long time because the instruments kept getting better. They went from photographic plates to electronic detectors, all these things that we kind of know about and take for granted. And it isn't at the absolute forefront now, but it's still a very productive scientific, place. So I think the lesson from that is that these big telescopes at the frontier of what you can do today are gonna last for decades and they're gonna be it's a generational thing. And I really feel that myself that, I got to use the 200 inches telescope.

I didn't build it. I got to use the telescopes at Cerro Tololo in Chile and at Kitt Peak, and I didn't build those. But after a while, you know, you grow into a role where you do help to build the telescopes. And I did help the Magellan telescopes, and I was the head of the, optical and infrared at the at the Center for Astrophysics for a while. So, and I was on the actually, I'm kinda proud of this. I was on the the committee that wrote the report. This is how we take pride in ourselves. I was on the committee that wrote the report about what we should do after the Hubble Space Telescope.

And, of course, that eventually became the James Webb Space Telescope.

It's it's three d print.

Yeah. Very nice work there. It's not that color, actually.

Well, yeah. In space, no one could see where right. So it was wasn't it Hale who went a little bit over the edge, psychologically in the building of a hundred inch? Is is that what