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Astronomer here, I live and work on the Big Island. You are completely wrong to assume this means the end of TMT in Hawaii, it was pretty much what was expected to happen after the state supreme court vacated the permit last December. While the new permitting process is going to take more time (months or years, nobody knows for sure), TMT seem to be taking their time deciding on their next step and are still hoping to continue as planned. I have heard nothing that would suggest otherwise. Please understand a big project like that doesn't just up and leave after having so much invested. Supporters of the TMT here (of which there are plenty) are still hoping a new, watertight permit will come out of all this. Frankly, we're more shocked by the recent news about another batch of anti-TMT protesters being acquitted because they claimed to have "prevented a greater harm from occurring". But then again, this is Hawaii, and that's how things work here.

That not only happens in nature but in domestic crops as well. It could happen in any of the "naturally" bred versions of crops we plant. It has nothing specifically to do with GMO whatsoever. By not planting GMOs, you do absolutely nothing to mitigate that risk. So people who are anti-GMO because of that fear are also not basing their opposition on any good reasoning or science.

In fact, transgenics provide potential solutions to those types of blights when they happen. For example, the papaya industry in Hawaii. More recently, researchers have made progress on the citrus greening problem in Florida, which is on its way to being a major crisis.

Sorry from a different article:

http://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/articles/2007/ 06/29/local_news/local02.prt

Here's another article with a more close-up photo. Does anybody else hear a slithering voice saying "The Stars Are Right" when you look into its ever-so-hypnotic eye?

I've read that the Waikiki Beach event attracted 10,000 people. I'm not sure how many usually show up for the free "Sunset on the Beach" movies, though, so I don't know what the delta was there. I don't have numbers for Bishop either.

Hilo and Maui each had hundreds of attendees, were standing (or sitting on the floor) room only, had to open extra rooms for NASA TV streams, and still had people standing outside looking in the doors. The Keck headquarters in Waimea got about twice as many people as could fit inside.

Of course, anybody with enough bandwidth can watch NASA TV, but in our main program space (far too small, alas!) we also had a few other attractions:

• Lots of free posters, stickers, etc.
• Professional astronomers Shadia Habbal, J.D. Armstrong and Jonathan Williams fielding questions and, in Jon's case, giving a presentation.
• Live video links (via iChat AV) with a group of students from Hawaii and Iceland who were one floor above us, remotely operating the Faulkes telescope on Haleakala as part of a workshop with educators from the US, Iceland and the UK.
• Display of up-to-the-minute images off Faulkes. (Yes, the comet got a whole lot brighter!)
• Live video links with, and a presentation from, Mike Martin of Boeing (which provided the rocket), who was on the summit of Haleakala.
• Live video chat with Mike Maberry, Assistant Director for Maui at the U. of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy, also on the summit of Haleakala.
• Live video chat with Bill Giebink of the IfA, who was on the summit of Haleakala to keep an eye on Faulkes. (And who, I might note, showed up on video with his granddaughter sitting on his shoulders.)
• Live video chat with Glenn at the Smithsonian-Harvard-Taiwan submillimeter array on Mauna Kea
• Live video chat with Hiroko at the Caltech submillimeter observatory on Mauna Kea
• A couple brief bits of live streaming video from Japan's Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea.