Story highlights The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) will be the world's largest optical telescope

Built on a Chilean mountainside, it will offer the best glimpses of the early universe so far

(CNN) In the vast expanse of the universe, we are still trying to find our place. Is there anyone else out there? Where do we come from? Are there other habitable planets like our own?

These are just some of the questions astronomers and scientists grapple with on a daily basis.

Now they're rolling out the big guns.

Astronomers are enlisting a massive new telescope on a mountainside at Chile's Las Campanas Observatory in their quest for answers.

The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), will be the biggest Earth-based optical telescope ever built, ushering in a new era of deep space exploration.

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