On Sat, Dec 21, 2019 at 09:08:05AM -0500, John Clark wrote: > Although it comes as no surprise yesterday it became official, Jason Momoa > (aka Aquaman) has won and destroyed the largest telescope in the northern > hemisphere rendering us blind to the most distant objects that exist in > half of the universe, and all because of an invisible man who hates > telescopes and lives at one of the 3 best observing sites on planet Earth and > the only one in the northern hemisphere. Not exactly a triumph of > rationality or a day the human race can be proud of. > > Even though the telescope's suporters won every court battle the power of > Hollywood and Aquaman proved to be just too strong, the Governor of Hawaii > said the telescope "would not be proceeding with construction at this > time". The Governor also said "law enforcement will be removed from the > site" apparently thinking that now that they've won the protestors will > just go home. I hope he's right but, although nowhere near the thirty meter > category, that mountain still has the largest telescopes in the northern > hemisphere, and the entire observatory was shut down for over a month > because the astronomers feared for their lives, and now that the mob has > tasted blood I don't know what's going to happen. I do know that if I was > an astronomer on that mountain I'd be scared right now.
Oh. That is unfortunate. But astronomers have many more reasons to be scared. In the meantime, a billionaire attempts to destroy a good part of worldwide ground based astronomy, which is of course unfortunate, too. If the article is correct, up to 12000 objects will pepper the sky like blinking excrementa. Or 42000 if optimists have their way. Optimists, too, believe in invisible things, like their luck to never be called for responsibility for their actions. Myself, I find pesimists to be much more trustworthy. [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_(satellite_constellation) ] QUOTE START: The large number of planned satellites have been met with criticism from the astronomical community.[106][107][108] Astronomers claim that the number of visible satellites will outnumber visible stars, and that their brightness in both optical and radio wavelengths will severely impact scientific observations. Because the Starlink satellites can autonomously change their orbits, observations cannot be scheduled to avoid them. The International Astronomical Union and National Radio Astronomy Observatory have released official statements expressing concern on the matter.[11][109] SpaceX representatives and Musk have claimed that the satellites will have minimal impact.[110] Many professional astronomers have disputed these claims based on initial observation of the Starlink v0.9 satellites on the first launch, shortly after their deployment from the launch vehicle.[111][112][113][114] In later statements on Twitter, Musk stated that SpaceX will work on reducing the albedo of the satellites and will provide on-demand orientation adjustments for astronomical experiments, if necessary.[115][116] On 18 November 2019, a Chilean observatory's observations were interrupted by SpaceX's satellite train consisting of 60 Starlink satellites. [117][118] Concerns have been raised about the long term danger of space junk resulting from placing thousands of satellites in orbits above 1,000 km, where orbital decay takes several thousand years.[10][119][120] The orbital debris and radio frequency interference issues generated by Starlink satellite network may expose population[clarification needed] to severe risks. QUOTE END -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_r...@bigfoot.com ** -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/20191226143440.GB30571%40tau1.ceti.pl.
