High on La Puna de Atacama, the arid plateau Argentina shares with Chile, there is a lonely portal to the cosmos. The Transient Optical Robotic Observatory of the South (TOROS) sits at 4,660 meters, or more than 15,000 feet above sea level, where the combination of clear desert skies and low light pollution provides researchers the chance to observe some of the universe’s most enigmatic phenomena, including the space-time ripples known as gravitational waves. TOROS is just the first of three observatories planned for the site; it will eventually be…
