>"ALMA can combine up to 66 antennas, with 1225 baselines, and a maximum distance of 16 kilometres between the antennas. Thus, ALMA has by far the highest resol

>"ALMA can combine up to 66 antennas, with 1225 baselines, and a maximum distance of 16 kilometres between the antennas. Thus, ALMA has by far the highest resolution available in radio astronomy, up to ten times better than that achieved, at visible wavelengths, by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. [...] In the case of ALMA, radio waves are combined digitally inside a powerful computer called correlator." Nice! Compare the concept of interferometry (putting together a signal from multiple parts from multiple receivers) with that of phased-array beamforming (sending a signal by breaking it up into multiple parts and sending those parts via different transmitters...) These two ideas would seem to be candidates for being conceptual opposites -- at least to a cursory examination...