Hawaii Approves Telescope On Volcano Sacred To Indigenous People (reuters.com)

A new $1.4 billion telescope will be built atop a Hawaiian volcano indigenous people consider sacred. The team of scientists fighting for the telescope won approval from Hawaiian officials on Thursday after selecting the site and applying to build there in 2009. Reuters reports: The Hawaii Board of Land and Natural Resources voted 5-2 to allow construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on the summit of Mauna Kea on Hawaii's Big Island, state officials said in a statement. Astronomers consider the summit one of the world's best places to view the cosmos, while Native Hawaiians say the project would disturb holy ground crucial to their connection with ancestors and the heavens. A consortium of scientists initially received construction permits from state officials in 2011. In 2015, the Hawaii Supreme Court voided that decision, saying officials did not follow the proper procedures for a "contested case hearing." That forced the state board to re-evaluate the proposal with more input from opponents. The project calls for building one of the world's largest telescopes atop the dormant volcano.

Comments

The Right of Astronomers

[SPopulisQR]

to live in Hawaii are not to be messed with. Truth is there is a lot of very tall mountain ranges all around the globe, that are much taller with much dryer air and virtually no light pollution. Here is the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Also, the higher the mountain the lesser density of the air, which will always result in better results. Who wants to work in Pakistan, India or Chile, if the world can be convinced that Hawaii has the best place for the telescope.

Re:Science vs Religion

[Ol Olsoc]

Which way does liberal outrage swing these days?

I think the latest algorithm works like this:

Yeah yeah, take whatever group you don't like, and strawman the living fuck out of them. It kind of leaves out my family, who were serious liberals, yet were very religious.

And then there was me, the most conservative one of the bunch, who doesn't have any part of that bullshit fairy tale or any fairy tale for that matter.

Regardless, despite what people have been trained to think, there are right wing atheists, and left wing deeply religious. If a religion has a litmus test of politics, it is a political group more than a religion.