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I've been shaping a lump of glass to go at the back of an 8" reflective telescope, a process that can take around 20 to 30 hours work if done by hand.  Think of it like jogging but with a creative outcome.  The aim is to create an object of such perfect form that it can be used to see the colourful light from other galaxies.  The final product is an 8" section of a sphere with 40" radius, shaped to an accuracy better than 2/1000th of the width of a human hair The process involves grinding the glass with increasingly fine powders of grit, usually made of a very hard mineral called Silicon Carbide.  Finally, to get to an optically transparent