SCIENCE WITH THE VLT Astrophysics on Its Shortest Timescales

The VLT will permit enormously more sensitive searches for high-speed phenomena in astrophysics, such as those expected from instabilities in accretion onto compact objects, or in the fine structure of photon emission. On [sub}millisecond timescales, light curves are of little use, and measurements have to be of power spectra or other statistical functions, which increase with the light collected to a power of 2 or more, making the gains very much greater than for ordinary photometry or spectroscopy. High-Speed Astrophysics The frontiers of astrophysics have expanded through observational break-throughs. The Universe has turned out to be more enigmatic than even the creative fantasy of astronomers had been able to predict. It is worth recalling that many of today's 'ordinary ' topics such as quasars or stellar coronae are results of discov-eries enabled by improvements in tech