We're building a billion dollar telescope and it isn't just aimed at the stars: it's looking for the first ones. The new Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) proves that sometimes bigger really is better and will be elements in the optics allows them all to act as one (which is good because it's impossible to build a real one that big.)  The realtime control also allows astronomers to correct for the effects of the atmosphere – so even though it's on the ground, the TMT will have twelve times the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope.

The key really is collecting more light.  No matter what CSI may have told you, there's no way to magically make more information appear in a blurry picture – that's why the picture is blurry.  Astronomers have engineered an awesome array of tools to extract every scrap of data from images, but you just can't beat starting with a better picture.  The TMT will be able to see further and clearer than anything to date, examining the intriguingly blurred shapes hovering the very edge of current technology.

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