Science with Extremely Large Telescopes

Astronomers around Europe are gearing up for the next generation of ground-based telescopes to follow on from the success of the VLT and other 6-10m telescopes. All aspects of astronomy will be dramatically advanced by the enormous improvements attainable in collecting area and angular resolution: major new classes of astronomical objects will become accessible to observation for the first time. In July of this year a book was produced by a group of European astronomers, which describes the science achievable with a telescope of diameter 50-100m. Here we present some highlights from this science case, ranging from direct observations of Earth-like planets outside our own Solar System to the most distant objects in the Universe.