Slashdot Mirror
Hawaii Supreme Court Approves Thirty Meter Telescope On Mauna Kea (hawaiinewsnow.com)
Applehu Akbar shares a report from Hawaii News Now: After years of legal wrangling and protests, the Thirty Meter Telescope got a green light Tuesday from the state Supreme Court. In a 4-to-1 decision, the state's highest court ruled in favor of the telescope's construction atop Mauna Kea, effectively ending all legal avenues for contesting the controversial project unless the U.S. Supreme Court takes up the case. In a statement, TMT International Observatory Board of Governors Chairman Henry Yang said the body is "grateful" for the ruling and "committed to being good stewards on the mountain."
Slashdot reader Applehu Akbar adds: "Green anti-science organizations, such as Deep Green Resistance and Sierra Club, have been trying to stop TMT construction for years, in an expanded version of an earlier campaign to halt the construction of large research telescopes in southeastern Arizona. As in Arizona, their excuse was at first endangered species on the construction site, and subsequently native rights.
"TMT is an advanced world-class telescope designed to investigate and answer some of the most fundamental questions regarding our universe, including the formation of stars and galaxies after the Big Bang and how the universe evolved to its present form. Native Hawaiians will also be included in other direct benefits from the TMT," the court wrote. "Thus, use of the land by TMT is consistent with conservation and in furtherance of the self-sufficiency of the state."
"TMT is an advanced world-class telescope designed to investigate and answer some of the most fundamental questions regarding our universe, including the formation of stars and galaxies after the Big Bang and how the universe evolved to its present form. Native Hawaiians will also be included in other direct benefits from the TMT," the court wrote. "Thus, use of the land by TMT is consistent with conservation and in furtherance of the self-sufficiency of the state."
The construction permit comes with dozens of conditions that have to be met â" including cultural training for staff
Go away, Haole!
Who can blame them??
Hawaiians will also be included in other direct benefits from the TMT
What benefits will they gain from a big telescope being nearby?
Also.... it's literally just named Thirty Meter Telescope?
Shaddap anti-science republican faggot
You've clearly never visited Hawaii OR obtained even a cursory understanding of the issue here. The anti-science ones in this issue are the green party and native Hawaiians.
Or " anti-constructuin"
Really? Go fucking look at the island. It's obvious that science and education are much less important to them than shopping malls and resorts. This was just a fucking shakedown on an easy mark.
I wouldn't call them anti-science so much as anti-progress of any type.
Is that it, or are the 25,346 other approvals left to go?
Strawman. Nobody is asking for a shopping mall on top of Moana Kea.
Moana Kea is uniquely adapted for the TMT. That some groups who claim to be "green" have tried to block the TMT using every excuse they could thus clearly and fairly defines these groups as "Green anti-science".
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
You'd think that "greens" would actually be pro-science, what with environmental issues mostly being understandable by actual science.
But think of all the so-called "greens" who are into essential oils, crystals, supplements and all the other esoteric unscientific nonsense. They want to align with Native Americans because they think it gives credibility to their new age bullshit to associate it with actual pagan religious practices, which while culturally legitimate are no less fantasy than new agers or Catholics for that matter.
And actual organized native opposition to something like a scientific observatory is really nothing more than a political shakedown for concessions somewhere else.
Here is the smoking gun, their manifesto on TMT:
https://deepgreenresistancegre...
The author of this piece, Will Falk, has been one of the earliest organizers of the protest movement in Hawaii, whipping up a native uprising against "Western science." Until the Greens got involved, Hawaiians had a long and peaceful relationship with research science, astronomy in particular. Their ancestors constructed star maps to navigate the Pacific, and King Kamehameha himself was an astronomy buff.
The whole summit of mauna Kea is a 114,000 - acre nature preserve administered by University of Hawaii. Within that preserve, a 52-acre patch near the summit was set aside for astronomy in 1960. The TMT would be the latest of about 13 telescopes that have been built in this area. It is the first one to become controversial.
What a bunch of credulist nonsense
Actually its the best location on US soil, but hey, if thats what you consider earth...
The Antarctic has some pretty major advantages (and challenges), however has a somewhat restricted view..
Tibet has a few locations that are outstanding..
The Atacama Desert and Equador have some pretty good (better than Hawaii) locations.
However this is a good location, and the people blocking it should be denied medical science, since they want to live without progress..
(Of course thats rarely the locals, they just get caught up in it, its a bunch of nothing-better-to-do whackjobs who travel around trying to block science 'because' )
Good one.
I thought you were serious till I got to the "motivation arrays" bit.
Are those the anti-vax, anti-GMO, or gluten-free republicans? Oops, wrong anti-science party.
Just another day in Paradise
Save your enthusiasm for much more worthy causes. There's a whole lot more endangered species and visual pollution where that came from.
Maybe you could look up the TMT and why it's different before making such a stupid comment.
Right, because the "scientific-industrial complex" just wants to spend ~$1B in a remote location to fuck up the view. This is on grounds that were set aside long ago for astronomy, which according to you has no value to humanity. Obviously, we don't need things like GPS, or cell phones. In fact, just go read this to find out what astronomy has done for humanity, then come back and apologize for your ignorance. Otherwise, we'll just know it was stupidity, which can't be fixed.
https://www.iau.org/public/the...
Just another day in Paradise
The whole summit of mauna Kea is a 114,000 - acre nature preserve administered by University of Hawaii. Within that preserve, a 52-acre patch near the summit was set aside for astronomy in 1960. The TMT would be the latest of about 13 telescopes that have been built in this area. It is the first one to become controversial.
Ah well. I guess unthinking "resist" stuff isn't as easy to control as you might think.
The Catholics are unscientific? The big bang theory was from a Catholic priest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You mean the Trump who wants to make a Space Force to proactively protect the Earth from asteroids - vs the green party who want to halt all progress and the left in general who want to defend the "rights" of native Hawaiians who don't even live/work anywhere near the peak of this volcano while telling the rest of the world "doesn't matter if it's the best place in literally the whole planet to build a telescope, because some politically correct garbage."
Here is the smoking gun, their manifesto on TMT:
https://deepgreenresistancegre...
Wow. I have seldom read such tortured logic.
Can I ask why you're here? Seriously, this is a board that caters towards nerds, and on this forum, in a discussion between "keeping a place safe for god" and moving science forward, you've chosen god. Now, I'm not saying everyone on this forum will agree on all things, one would hardly call this place an echo chamber, or even that siding with the protesters is wrong, but it does seem like an opinion that's a bit out of character for the demographic this site caters to.
A small, but important, triumph.
Catholic here. We regularly get confused with fundamental christians. It's a bit tiresome, but to a lot of people, there is no difference between the various christian sects. People like the GP would probably shit themselves if they knew how many mormons worked in engineering.
The absolute worst ones though are the converts later in life. My sister in law was born in a strict pro-science atheist family, she converted to non-denominational christianity later in life. On a trip with her once she insisted on visiting the creation museum and really does believe that the world is only 6000 years old. I personally find it embarrassing to be around her when she gets going. And there really is no discussion on the matter, it's best to just ignore her, correct things with her kids and carry on with your life.
The OP is saying that Catholicism (or any religion for that matter) itself is unscientific (which doesn't prohibit the people who follow it from being scientific) since it purports a belief in something that is at present (and likely will always be) unfalsifiable. Realistically though, that statement was only added so some nitwit didn't try to troll by complaining than western religions aren't any better than the so-called pagan religions. It seems as though you found a way anyhow though.
Will Falk seems to fit right in with "fallists" that demand "de-colonization" of science (i.e. regarding voodoo and science to be on an equal footing).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Such folks really should adhere to their own standards and refuse any use of electronic devices.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
It appears that the site has been slashdotted (when's the last time that's happened?) so here's a link to the page on archive.org for anyone who wanted to read it: https://web.archive.org/web/20160823082609/https://deepgreenresistancegreatbasin.org/civilization/colonialism/science-vs-the-real-world-on-mauna-kea/
It's actually pretty funny in a way. It's like someone took every single ultra-progressive whack-job trope or talking point and rammed it into one piece, and I haven't even gotten through the first third of it yet.
This guy should perform in clubs.
Finally some rationality. The left needs to keep losing.
The scientific-industrial complex sweeps all before it. This is just more visual pollution of the environment in order to collect data that has absolutely no value to humanity, but which satisfies the peculiarly accented motivation arrays of this type of scientist.
Being able to spot an Earth-impacting asteroid when it’s still far enough away for us to do something it could literally save human civilization.
Unfortunately, this would also include your sorry ass.
I wouldn't call them anti-science so much as anti-progress of any type.
Indeed: they are anti-science because they are anti-progress.
It blows my mind that such people can thing of themselves as "green". Bronze-age farmers clear-cut forests for farmland everywhere they lived. E.g., the Scottish highlands used to be heavily forested, but were almost entirely clear-cut. Meanwhile, thanks to progress, US forested area increased dramatically in the last hundred years. Even though it's a mix worldwide (third world nations are still clear-cutting in some places), worldwide forest corverage has increased more than 7% since the 1980s.
Progress makes life better. That's why we call it progress.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The scientific-industrial complex sweeps all before it. This is just more visual pollution of the environment in order to collect data that has absolutely no value to humanity, but which satisfies the peculiarly accented motivation arrays of this type of scientist.
Whoo-Hooo, we gots ourselves a live one here, with their first shot across the bow! Please don't be a Poe, please don't be a Poe.
Tell us oh wise one, how knowledge not valuable. Engage us and enlighten us.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Or maybe we don't care for an ugly structure built to gather information that is of no practical use whatsoever? Or maybe we think the money would be better spent elsewhere? Tell me, how good is some data about stars you will never ever visit, and that nobody cares for, when you're sick and have no health care? #stopmadness #humanityfirst #peoplenotplanets
Of course, your views assume that it's someone else who is affected. Soon as it's you, you get your friends to storm the nearest wildlife sanctuary in order to teach the Feds a lesson, like those Texans did.
So you're comparing a scientific endevour the whole species benefits from and a few people are pissed off about because they're racist as fuck and hate outsiders (but it's OK, they get a pass because they aren't white,) to a situation where hundreds of people worked land over generations and still actively use it but were being sold out by a corrupt politician who wanted to sell land to Chinese investors? Those two things are in no way shape or form related, and it really goes to show your bias that you even believe they could be.
Do you know where the Hawiians live or work? I don't and I've followed the story. I can be absolutely certain you know even less.
Lived there for years, actually. Native Hawaiians are easily the most racist and xenophobic demographic in the US, by a very wide margin.
The best place to build a telescope is in space. But you won't spend the money. Spoils your view, against your religion, etc.
Good luck getting a 30m telescope into space with modern technology.
You know, if it's an FU for the Hawaiians, it should be an FU for you too. Build in space a telescope of equal size. The government should take what it damn well pleases from you to build the telescope there. After all, you don't live or work there and it's the best place. Hey, your arguments. Not my problem.
The government isn't taking shit from them: they don't use it. It is literally the single best place on Earth to build a telescope, they don't get squatters rights on such a precious resource they don't even have any intention of using.
Then nobody's land is disturbed, there's even less atmospheric distortion and you can move the telescope to point in any direction you like from any point in space you like.
Yes, it's more expensive, but the chief argument on this site for the ground telescope is that science should be done even when the ignorant object or when it affects their religious quality of life or involves taking things those people consider theirs.
I've no problems with that. Most rich people are ignorant, they consider money theirs, and money gives them a religious quality of life rather than a practical one.
Bet you ten boxes of doughnuts that right wingers will suddenly discover reasons why government would be bad for taking away their property, or for applying any of their other reasoning to them.
Mind you, I don't think that should matter. I think they should build a series of 30' telescopes in space, with interferometry. Not just in the optical range, but in other parts of the spectrum from microwave to UV.
A ten by ten interferometer would have the sensitivity to observe the surface of Proxima b. That's far more useful than a third swimming pool in a desert or a dozen McMansions nobody lives in. Give me the science.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Personally, I am against the construction of telescopes anywhere
This agitated goon needs to put down the letters and numbers, even the tools and clothes, and head the fuck back into the woods; his appropriation of culture is annoying me.
Biodiversity at the peak of Mauna Kea? Have you been there? I have, its beautiful. Its far above the tree line, freezing cold, and nearly barren. Ahinahina grows there occasionally in the more sheltered spots, but it grows elsewhere and the cultivation / reintroduction is going well. Unless you kill all the wildlife that jumps the fences to eat the remaining naturally occurring species then this interesting adaptation of California Tarweed might be sort of lost. There isn't really anything else of interest up there except volcanic tundra, ancient quarry sites, and a few shrines. And people who claim you shouldn't do astronomy there out of respect for people to whom its sacred either have no idea who its sacred to, or want to forget their own history. If Kamehameha was alive he'd probably have loved TMT. (google Kaneakanoowaha)
Then build in space. You'll see asteroids a lot clearer from there, as Arthur C Clarke pointed out more than once. You'll also be able to see them from more directions, since a telescope in Hawaii loses the benefits of a thin atmosphere when trying to look near the horizon.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The location may be ecologically unique (it's going to have a certain "sky island" quality to it but it's hardly ecologically rich; have you been to the top of Maui? It looks like Mars; a few extremophiles should survive the earth-moving and the laying of concrete...
This is a Penn and Teller episode waiting to happen...
It has enormous value for humanity, and science is the enemy of most of the industrial complex, which is why the right hate science and the left distrust industry.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Sorry about that. I have posted this manifesto link a time or two before in comments attached to other articles about the TMT, but those attracted little attention at the time. I’m glad that there still are enough Slashdotters to occasionally slashdot sites.
I bet you believe the world is flat... or we live inside the blue eye of a giant named Macumber. People against astronomical research should be deprived of all science has given man kind: no electricity, no modern medicine. Go back to your pre-Aristotelian way of thinking. Or, be a mench and read "The Demon Haunted Universe" and stop adding to the problem and encouraging others to follow you into the abyss of superstition.
"The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark" by Carl Sagan 1995 Random House
Good book.
... the Sierra Club was shut down yesterday following the discovery of an endangered species of cockroach, the Sierra Club cockroach, found living in its headquarters. Although related to other species, this cockroach is unique in that it is defined as being resident within the Sierra Club headquarters building.
Have gnu, will travel.
Why would he enlighten us when his position is that knowledge is not valuable? Embrace your ignorance, fool!
Telescope science advances.
And if you're building an interferometer - which they could and possibly have - then no, thirteen "isn't enough" because however many you have, you essentially only have one. One that has the collecting area of all the mirrors combined and the mirror size the maximum distance between any two mirror edges. A telescope more powerful than you could imagine.
The real objection is that the mountain simply isn't big enough to do a good enough job and you still have atmospheric effects.
What you want is something like this using optical telescopes in space. Collecting area one square kilometre, virtual mirror 3000 kilometres across.
With that, you could map every asteroid larger than a thimble in a matter of months, discover the atmospheric chemistry and weather patterns of every planet in a hundred light years and plot the exact 3D location of every star in the Andromeda galaxy.
Ok, it would cost a bit more, but as the consensus amongst the right is that taking from others in the name of science is fine for Kea, I must assume they've no problems with the Feds taking everything past the first five million from the rich. It's just religion after that and we're all agreed that religion has no value. What's wrong with taking nothing?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
A telescope can only view so much at a time, and a ground-based telescope is a LOT easier to maintain than a space based one. Ideally, we should be building telescopes everywhere we can, if for no reason other than as an early warning system for asteroids. The other major reason we should be coating the Earth is telescopes is that modern data processing techniques allow us to combine images for higher resolution when taken from different locations to emulate a larger aperture - we could conceivably have a virtual Earth-sized aperture telescope capable of actually spotting Earth-sized planets in other systems AND determining atmospheric concentration therein if we had enough Earth-based telescopes. The next major breakthrough in space telescopes is the James Webb telescope - which really pushes the bounds of what we can successfully deploy in space at only a few meters in size, and the major gain there isn't the aperture but the wavelength (we don't have any good infrared telescopes right now, those simply don't work on Earth because of the atmospheric effects, but visible light and radio telescopes are much better to place on Earth.) Maintenance costs really can't be disregarded, at least until our society reaches a post-scarcity state.
Exactly. You can build 100 ground based telescopes and it won't be enough. Build them in space.
There is no point in an early warning system for asteroids. If one is going to hit Earth, it is going to happen. Save your pennies and build telescopes in space.
When the same set of Green groups tried to stop telescope construction here in Arizona during the Nineties, one of their arguments at the time, and I swear I’m not making this up, was “Why not build on Mauna Kea? Hawaii has no cloudy monsoon season, and is astronomy-friendly because of the specifically-designated telescope reserve on the mountain.”
I’m sure that eventually we will be able to build a thirty-meter scope in space. While we wait out those decades, TMT will see better than the 72-inch Hubble because its multiple mirrors will wiggle in real time to offset the blurring of atmospheric cells. And it will do so at a tiny fraction of the cost. In fact, TMT will cost less than the much-delayed JWST space telescope, which is much smaller.
Very easy to get a 30 metre space telescope.
Take the glass into space, then melt it. In space, you can get the purity higher and the defect density lower, so creating the mirror on Earth is stupid and limiting. You can get the crude shape easily enough by any number of means.
You can then grind and polish by machine, and machines work better when they're not competing with vibrations from mini quakes. You can use a mathematical model for the template.
You now have a mirror. You can have a mirror factory in space pump out mirrors at whatever rate you like. Have it as a module on the ISS, if you want. Then you just send up the parts for the rest of the telescope and have an engineering crew do the assembly work.
Once ISS is abandoned for science, why not?
There's nothing hard here. Expensive, as it would require three rockets per telescope to get everything up, but SpaceX has made it affordable.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
If only. The mountain is very broad and the slope shallow. The view is of the rock fields around you and the clouds far below. On a perfect day it may be nice, but ocean air hitting mountains tends to make clouds.
Seriously
Do you know where the Hawiians live or work? I don't and I've followed the story. I can be absolutely certain you know even less.
They don't live or work where the telescope is being built. And since it's basically bare ground already, it's not going to have any notable ecological impact.
You know, if it's an FU for the Hawaiians, it should be an FU for you too. Build in space a telescope of equal size.
You do it. We're building it on the planet because it's easier and cheaper.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That's just not true. If we catch them far enough in advance we can divert them with modern tech. The issue there is we need to be looking all over pretty constantly.
We could build a three hundred metre telescope in space today. Gentlemen, we can build it. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world's first optical interferometer.
In all seriousness, it's child's play in terms of the science and technology. Ship some glass into space, melt it, cool it in roughly the right shape, we know microgravity forms purer crystalline structures so we've fewer defects than we could ever achieve on Earth, we can then use machines not impeded by either air turbulence or ground vibration to actually grind and polish.
That last bit is simulated on Earth. It's how large mirrors are made. They simulate space. So we already have all that experience and hardware.
Because you're not transporting a mirror to space, you've no problems with size restrictions or damage caused by launch.
The rest is assembly. There's probably not much more dust in space than in a clean room, so once the parts are packed up and shipped, the difference is that you're not competing with gravity over where the parts go.
The ISS has limited lifespan for science and America wants out anyway. Converting the American wing to a space telescope manufacturing facility requires a couple of modules for mirror manufacture and not much more.
That could all be set up within Trump's first term in office.
Less time than it would take to get the politics sorted out in Hawaii.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Why are we linking to Scribd the shitty service which scrapes content off of others and charges you membership to read or download it?
Could someone please provide a reasonable link where this ruling originated from, rather than enriching some assholes?
Bad place to assemble a space telescope. Letting politicians fondle the critical components was stupid. Many of the difficulties were political, not technological. Those aren't optical mirrors, materials and wavelength matter.
You're much better off making the mirrors in space. It's not hard, as virtually all the technology being used to make large mirrors try to simulate the conditions of space.
There is life even in deep Antarctica. Unless you can show David Attenborough conclusively showing no life there, there's life there.
Her singing is NOT robotic, thank you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
For this reason, God sends them a powerful delusion(operation of wandering)(planet) so that they will believe the lie.
What is Energeian Planes?
I wouldn't even call them anti-progress, just anti-building-on-that-specific-site. The whole case pretty much came down to 'so who gets to decide how the land is used?', with a particular group having been given the authority and other interested parties feeling the authority was being misused. That isn't really anti progress, just an authority issue.
There is no meaningful difference. You all think you're better than everyone else ...
There is so much irony in telling someone that they think they're better with such a smug 'I'm better than you' tone.
They're strip mining the Ozarks for crystals, you know....
Or at least so I've heard, in at least a couple of locations, and confirmed one in Arkansas just now with a simple search.
Well, progress tends to make some life better and other life worse. This was a NIMY issue, they were not against progress itself, but did not want it done on a site that would take something away from them. They see it as their sacred site, thus their decision regarding what it can and can not be used for, while other parties want it for their use instead. And that is the classic problem when someone feels they can make better use of a resource than the people who are currently using it... often from a macro perspective we give them a pass since it 'contributes to society', but it still involves taking something that other people were using and destroying their use. The land the telescope is built on and the land around it will no longer be usable for their purposes, and that is what they were upset about. The utility of the telescope is irrelevant for people who are being asked to pay a price so others can profit.
as the consensus amongst the right is that taking from others in the name of science is fine for Kea, I must assume they've no problems with the Feds taking everything past the first five million from the rich. It's just religion after that and we're all agreed that religion has no value. What's wrong with taking nothing?
wait, what?
Why does everything have to be reduced to a right/left dung throwing fest? I'd be shocked if the astronomical community designing/building/using the scope voted much differently than 1/3 R and 2/3 D. But, hey, you've got to have only two boxes to cram any policy decision into, so go ahead.
There's an abundance of species of lichen in the mountains of Antarctica.
Unless David Attenborough has personally affirmed no life is present, it's safe to conclude it is.
The problem with chaotic systems is that you never know which variables were important. Note "were". You cannot know what the variables are in advance, nor their affect on the biosphere as a whole. You can only know after you make a change that there was zero or non-zero impact.
That doesn't mean do nothing. The precautionary principle doesn't advocate sterile minds or zero progress. It does advocate a little more understanding than is possible, so you modify it.
Considering ignorance to be a harm in its own right and harm to be only meaningful in the long term, always choose the best path of lowest probable aggregate harm.
I don't see the big, bad awful problem with that. A lack of science is a harm, so you cannot ever choose a path of little or no science. At the same time, you actually stop, observe and think about all the other variables. There aren't many, it's a bloody mountain. You perform a minimizing function to get the options of least harm, then a maximizing function on that set to get the option of greatest benefit.
It's not a perfect solution, but it's better than two sides spending decades screaming at each other.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I'm not sure what you have against my kilt, or how it relates to progress.
Sure, there were some people protesting because of what you said, but there were also "green" organizations involved who like to block progress on general principles.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
You don't need one, agreed, but labs used to make 30m mirrors simulate space and making glass in space leads to higher quality glass.
Since the antagonist has offered to pay for a 30m space telescope, I'd take them up on the offer.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
You’ve never visited the mountain, I’m thinking. I have, back when the very first telescopes were being built in the astronomy reserve area.
NIMBY doesn’t come into play at all her because nobody lives on Mauna Kea. The mountain is a desolate expanse of red cinder where no one lives. No one even lived there in pre-American times either, because the ali’i, the one-percenters of the Bronze Age world, reserved it for their rituals. Commoner Kanaka were punished by death for so much as visiting the place.
Today the upper part of the mountain is a specially designated natural preserve where every identified heiau (altar) of the ali’i are protected, as is every natural species that has been identified there, down to the humble wekiu bug. All of the telescopes occupy the small reserve within this area that has been approved since 1960 as non-infringing on culture or nature.
You'll find most of Scotland was clear-cut in the Iron Age, not the Bronze Age.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Very easy to get a 30 metre space telescope.
Take the glass into space, then melt it. In space, you can get the purity higher and the defect density lower, so creating the mirror on Earth is stupid and limiting. You can get the crude shape easily enough by any number of means.
I'm going to disregard this as a troll, as it would make me uncomfortable to know anyone who believes something so naively stupid is confident enough in themselves to speak.
Not for you to decide, shitboi.
Here in Arizona, the same gang of thugs who are whipping up the Hawaiians against astronomy tried to prevent the Catholics specifically from building a telescope. Their research arm, Speccolo Vatticana, which has been doing astronomy for centuries near Rome, moved its operation here after Arcetri became smogged in.
Fortunately, we’re a bunch of armed Republicans fully aware of the importance of science to our state. We ran the Greens off, and the Large Binocular Tesescope was built.
This being text, there is no tone. Whatever "tone" you were "hearing" came from you.
Lived there for years, actually. Native Hawaiians are easily the most racist and xenophobic demographic in the US, by a very wide margin.
Don't disagree. Don't blame them either considering the history. Hell, look at how racist white folks on the mainland can be when a few more brown folks show up. What happened to the Hawaiians is far beyond that.
No worries: if the volcano gods have any real objections, I'm sure Mauna Kea is quite capable of looking out for itself :-)
"Moana Kea" is pretty funny.
Both, I think. I'll admit my my knowledge prehistoric Scotland is pretty limited, but the forests took a real hit when bronze age people arrived ~2000 BC. Apparently, about half of the forests has been cleared when the Romans arrived.
In any case it's only been in the past century or so that it's gone the other direction, and of course modern groups are working hard to restore the forest there.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Are those the anti-vax, anti-GMO, or gluten-free republicans? Oops, wrong anti-science party.
Devide and concour, over and over and over.
Protestant here.
Clear difference. The world will never care.
You might get a convert (to Catholicism or Christianity) on a case-by-case, but society will always hate you because it hates Jesus and were the real ones who put him to death.
Having "advanced" sounding views on science is not going to move the public or society in any meaningful way.
Meanwhile, the neanderthal evidence has been discredited by secular scientists and there are huge gaps between species in the fossil record and some scientists maintain the mutations were guided by aliens from space to prop up the decaying views of Charles Darwin.
I don't blame anyone for being xenophobic, tribalism is Human nature across the board. It doesn't mean it should be allowed to slow research. Everyone has had ancestors who ate shit and got fucked sideways, without exception, the only difference is how long ago it happened. We have a lot of evolutionary selection which took place to make us despise foreigners if not at least distrust them, it's not an excuse from anyone.
See??
Or maybe we don't care for an ugly structure built to gather information that is of no practical use whatsoever?
The usefulness of information cannot be ascertained until it has been gathered.
Worse, because the "correction" is itself a non-random error, it's liable to experience constructive interference in the ground. That means you'll get artefacts. A hundred telescopes in an interferometer on the ground will not reliably distinguish actual observation from artefact.
The same number of telescopes in space won't have such artefacts to contend with because the signal isn't being "cleaned".
In fact, I'm not even sure you CAN clean a signal from a single interferometer in an array. The whole point of such a system is that you're using constructive interference to identify real signals. Atmospherics will constitute noise thousands of times larger. Anything that smoothes out atmospherics must surely eliminate the very signals an interferometer is designed to detect.
If adaptive optics are out, then optical SVLBI is really the only option.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Are you arguing that ultra-pure materials can't be made in space? That'll be news to, well, everyone.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
TMT episode II
Pele Strikes Back
Exactly. It wasn't meant to beat up on Natives for whatever hocus-pocus they want to believe in, it's that all the religions are based on hocus-pocus.
Just NIMBYs. They're everywhere, and all across the political spectrum, and unfortunately they have lawyers.
This space intentionally left blank
I don't know about you, but I'd appreciate having as much "pencils down, smoke 'em if you got 'em" time as science can give us.
jythie observed:
Well, progress tends to make some life better and other life worse. This was a NIMY issue, they were not against progress itself, but did not want it done on a site that would take something away from them. They see it as their sacred site, thus their decision regarding what it can and can not be used for, while other parties want it for their use instead. And that is the classic problem when someone feels they can make better use of a resource than the people who are currently using it... often from a macro perspective we give them a pass since it 'contributes to society', but it still involves taking something that other people were using and destroying their use. The land the telescope is built on and the land around it will no longer be usable for their purposes, and that is what they were upset about. The utility of the telescope is irrelevant for people who are being asked to pay a price so others can profit.
I'm disagreeing only with your statement:
The land the telescope is built on and the land around it will no longer be usable for their purposes, and that is what they were upset about.
The fact is that the native Hawaiians never used it for any purpose. It is, according to their religious belief, sacred ground; the home of the goddess Pele, which no human may visit uninvited by her. Building a telescope there is ipso facto sacrilege to them.
However, in all fairness to the good people of the TMT International Observatory, it's very much still the case that the native religious practitioners are free to shun Moana Kea's summit in obedience to Pele's will. Nonetheless, it's all but guaranteed that faithful Kanaka will assemble there to attempt to block construction of the TMT, whenever that commences.
By now, you'd think the contortions the religious mind can put itself through in order to justify its actions wouldn't surprise me in the slightest way - but the phenomenon continues baffle me, every time I learn of a new variant. In this case, I see as ludicrous the fact that the Kanaka have somehow talked themselves into believing that them voluntarily commiting sacrilege to protect their goddess's home from unbelievers commiting a different variety of sacrilege as something of which Pele would approve ...
(Posting as AC only so as not to undo prior upmods in this thread.)
--
Check out my novel ...
Lack of O2 at 4300m elevation might put a dent in the tourist trade, also.
There is no point in an early warning system for asteroids. If one is going to hit Earth, it is going to happen.
Absolutely untrue. We already have the technology to divert an asteroid if we get enough early warning. The whole point is that the earlier the warning, the easier it is to divert the asteroid.
> There's an abundance of species of lichen in the mountains of Antarctica.
I don't understand what you're writing here. Are you saying that this telescope on a desolate mountain in Hawai'i is going to somehow harm lichens in Antarctica? Or that we don't know that Mauna Kea is utterly desolate?
Because that actually makes more sense than most of the arguments against the telescope. It's silly & wrong, but it's not the same kind of wrong as saying that we're disturbing the volcano gods. That said, for all the talk of unknowns, the fact is that they're quite small unknowns (and they'll help us reduce other unknowns).
Here is the smoking gun, their manifesto on TMT:
https://deepgreenresistancegre...
(checks out link...)
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!! The stupid!!!!!!!!!!!!! It burns, it burns!!!!!
"This was a NIMY issue, they were not against progress itself, but did not want it done on a site that would take something away from them. They see it as their sacred site"
If it were a site sacred to Christians or Jews, you'd be all in favor of trashing it. Don't deny it. We've seen it happen before.
Are you arguing that ultra-pure materials can't be made in space? That'll be news to, well, everyone.
Using modern technology? En mass and engineered+machined in very precise ways? Yes, I am absolutely arguing that. We don't have anywhere near the tech to do that now.
The truth hurts bruh. I know you HATE being told daily, hourly even, that you FUCKED UP and that you need to stop voting for shithead republicans, but you keep doing it anyway. TRUMP WON GET OVER IT!
One thing that has not been mentioned yet with ground based telescopes is by being larger, they have a better light collection surface and can spot fainter objects with shorter exposure times. Which in turn helps the AO when it has to mitigate the effect of atmospheric turbulence.
That said i would be very happy if we finally decided to launch a giant optical interferometer in space. The apertures and light collecting surfaces could be absolutely colossal.
The problem is it would cost so much the public opinion would not accept it. There were projects to send space missions with a small number of telescopes flying in formation to test the concept but even those were cancelled. Too bad for us and for Antoine Labeyrie, the first who theorised the notion as far as i know. I would like him to see his project realized before he dies.
So, for now we will have giant ground based telescopes. The EELT for the Southern hemisphere, the TMT for the Northern.
You mean the Trump who wants to make a Space Force to proactively protect the Earth from asteroids
Who's that? I only know of the Trump who wants to make a Space Force to proactively protect wealthy people from becoming less wealthy through pork projects.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Because asteroids can only hurt the wealthy, right?
Because asteroids can only hurt the wealthy, right?
Trump probably thinks an asteroid is a hemorrhoid that's shaped like a star. He doesn't give one shit about asteroid defense. Further, we don't need a new branch of the military for that. It can easily fall under the purview of the Air Force, like it does already. A new branch of the armed forces is created when there is a logistic need, not just for funsies.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Further, we don't need a new branch of the military for that.
We do if we want to be prepared to defend our planet from foreign threats. The army does civil service when there's no foreign threat to fight or when there's a disaster. Asteroids are that for Space Force. If we never have aliens trying to invade and Musk's Martian slave labor camp doesn't start constructing mass drivers en mass then that may be all they ever do, and hopefully it will be. Better to be prepared than not, especially with billionaires going gung-ho to conquer space - I for one am not anticipating they will change course and stop being sociopathic control freaks who will stop at nothing for more power and control over others just because they build a massive asteroid mining business.
I'm sorry your mind has been so badly co-opted by the complex. There is nothing to be said. When so much emotion is generated, one knows they are dealing with a fanatic, or someone who has a vested interest.
E Proelio Veritas.
Thank you for your emotional response.
E Proelio Veritas.
Sarcasm is not thought.
E Proelio Veritas.
You're sorry, but not in the way you think. Get some help.
Just another day in Paradise
We already are looking constantly with systems dedicated to the purpose. Telescopes like the TMT are never used to do sky surveys to find asteroids.
Huh? Making large telescope mirrors requires gravity to give them their rough parabolic shape. What orifice are you speaking out of?