With the signing last week of a "master agreement" for the Thirty Meter Telescope — destined to be the most advanced and powerful optical telescope in the world — the University of California and UCLA moved a step closer to peering deeper into the cosmos than ever before. Work on the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), named for its 30-meter primary mirror — three times the diameter of the largest existing telescopes — is scheduled to begin in April 2014 atop Hawaii's dormant Mauna Kea volcano. The TMT's scientific operations are slated to start in 2022.