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Mauna Kea Telescope Construction Slated To Resume

Posted by timothy on from the you've-got-to-see-the-bigger-picture dept.

After an earlier halt to the work of constructing the "world's most advanced and powerful telescope" (and subsequent loss of support from an organization acting on behalf of native Hawaiians,) the Thirty Meter Telescope is again in "on again" mode. From the Associated Press article as carried by U.S. News & World Report: The Mauna Kea site provides a clear view of the sky for 300 days a year, with little air and light pollution. The telescope project was developed as a collaboration between U.S. and Canada universities and the national institutes of Japan, China and India. Gov. David Ige in April said the Thirty Meter Telescope board is legally entitled to "use its discretion to proceed with construction." He said he respected the rights of protesters to appeal in court.

5 of 65 comments (clear)

  1. Nothing that money can't buy by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Those main reason 'natives' objected to the construction of the telescope not because of the sacredness of the mount Kea but the lack of a certain incentive --- namely, $$$

    Money can move mountains if needed be ... and in this case, as long as someone can pay those 'concerned natives' there will no longer be any objection, nor any protests over 'trampling of sacred ground'

    --
    Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
    1. Re: Nothing that money can't buy by Rei · · Score: 5, Informative

      Why do you think over a dozen observatories have been built there? Think it's cheap to sent giant pieces of delicate scientific equipment from the mainland? TFA doesn't even mention the actual reason why Mauna Kea is one of the best places on the planet for optical telescopes: seeing conditions (aka, how much celestial objects "twinkle" on average. Outside of deep Antarctica (Dome A, not far east of the South Pole), there's no other better known location on the planet (a couple are pretty close, like La Palma and La Silla, but none exceed it). Good seeing requires high altitude with the area around being as perfectly flat and uniform as possible for hundreds of kilometers.

      For optical telescopes, seeing is the most critical factor for resolving fine details. And this telescope is all about resolving fine details. Adaptive optics help counter seeing problems, but the better your seeing baseline, the better the final result.

      --
      What about the Ant People? They owe us money.
    2. Re: Nothing that money can't buy by voss · · Score: 5, Informative

      The natives of hawaii were never given a choice. Hawaii was annexed by force. Puerto Rico was also annexed but has been offered independence and turned it down. By the time the statehood vote was taken, mass numbers of non-hawaiians had moved to the state and become residents and the only vote offered was either statehood or territory.

    3. Re:Nothing that money can't buy by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You're right about the native part of the controversy, but the natives didn't get involved until the Greens decided to use them as pawns in the latest phase of their plan to destroy human civilization and bust us back to the Stone Age. In the past they have done this by preventing science from being applied, but most recently they have begun moving in on science itself. Stopping the TMT would be a crown jewel in this offensive. A nuclear plant not built in the US is a nuclear plant that can just as easily be built in China, but there is no Northern Hemisphere location for astronomy that can match Mauna Kea. La Silla covers the southern half of the sky and Mauna Kea gives us the northern half. Furthermore, the two locations are close enough to the equator to give us a large overlap zone in which long-baseline interferometry can be accomplished using both instruments.

      How do I know all this? Because in the Nineties, the Greens held a dress rehearsal of their strategy here in Arizona: http://www.mountgraham.org/con...
      Their attack was exactly the same: whip up bogus native claims, sprinkled with the usual dusting of nonexistent "environmental impacts." In actual fact, large telescopes create an environmental umbrella hundreds of miles wide, within which which any pollution would ruin the seeing. Fortunately the native claims argument did not carry as much weight in Arizona as it does in Hawaii, and humanity won. After years of the usual legal mummery, the telescopes got built.

      But did you know that one of the arguments Greens used at the time was: "Send the scopes to Mauna Kea. There's no opposition there."?

    4. Re: Nothing that money can't buy by Triklyn · · Score: 5, Insightful

      you know how nicely strategically positioned hawaii is in the pacific?

      hawaii was never going to be independent.

      Just a question of whose thumb.