Who should manage public land that is sacred to Native Americans?

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

new take on all this I had not heard. And, if true, it sounds awfully important.

You find it improbable that humans would set out to travel a great distance, with almost impossible difficulty, carrying all of their food, water, every resource necessary to sustain life, only to arrive somewhere unfamiliar, uncharted, not knowing what they might find?  

Would this be an unachievable journey that no one could ever trek? A few? Everyone?
Wait.  What were we discussing?  Religion? Science?

[randomq]

Lots of aspirational and inspirational goals in looking towards the heavens. Much less so looking back at our past. What's more sacred than the survival of our species and understanding the nature of reality?

The wrongs of yesterday should always be remembered, but not as a reason to divide us. We have much too important work in front of us.

['elepaio]

Heaven awaits ..

[TomK]

Heaven awaits ..

Are we traveling back to Dayton, Tennessee in 1925?

---

Humanity needs a very large telescope in the N Hemisphere to find another habitable planet.
Otherwise human extinction is a Probability-1 event at some point in the future.

Wow, now that's a new take on all this I had not heard. And, if true, it sounds awfully important. I wonder why the TMT guys haven't promoted that point themselves? I mean, if all of humanity's fate hangs in the balance.. like I said, wow! Would you care to elaborate?

It may be news to you, but it's widespread speculation in the scientific community that finding a habitable planet might be the only way humanity can survive in the long term, and TMT would provide the data to find such a planet, e.g.,

https://www.tmt.org/page/exoplanets

"The Thirty Meter Telescope will provide an enormous advance in our ability to identify and characterize extrasolar planets. New technological advances -- e.g. high-precision Doppler measurements, high-precision space-based photometry, and advanced adaptive optics – have driven a large number of exoplanet discoveries. The TMT’s instrumentation will generate an incredible number of additional discoveries, will drastically expand the kinds of planets we can detect, will provide a rich understanding of these planets’ physical properties, and will potentially yield the first detections of habitable rocky planets."

[kalianna]

What if we find this habitable planet next week? How many light years will it take to get there? How many decades would it take to create the technology to transport a seed group to go forth and multiply. Should we take consolation that having trashed our planet a very few of us might be able to go trash another one?

[TomK]

I tried to get this back to Hawaii-related stuff by mentioning the TMT, but anyway...

1) Light years are a measure of distance, not time;

2) The earlier you detect something in space the more time you have to develop the technology to either deal with it or get there;

3) I don't think the decisions of politicians or corporations etc., should stop blue-sky research into finding what's out there in the universe, whether it benefits us or not mainly because learning more about the universe only comes with benefits unless the knowledge is misused;

4) The TMT would provide lots of well-paid job opportunities for people on the island while helping humanity discover new knowledge rather than just bleating that there are no jobs or opportunities for local folk or that it somehow prevents people from practicing their religious beliefs.

[MyManao]

It may be news to you, but it's widespread speculation in the scientific community that finding a habitable planet might be the only way humanity can survive in the long term, and TMT would provide the data to find such a planet, e.g.,

OMG, Tom, the TMT is not some frickin' savior of us all, and anything, everything it can do others will do regardless if it's built of not. It's a telescope man. And before all is said and done it'll be no more than a dime a dozen peek a boo into the past. Nothing more. And by the time you get done with your fantasies they'll be others that'll do the same thing. No you can not walk on water.. get over it.

You know, your harping on all this just makes the entire project less desirable.. far less something many would support. Had you all found another way to address your concerns, and figured out how to play nice with others, the EPA wouldn't be telling the NSF to find an alternative. As it is, you're the poster child of no way man..

While me? little ol' me who seems to drive you silly, I still love the thing, though I think with each new spin around the sun we're getting that much closer to the big boys deciding to put it in space.. and leave the mountain to the old school guys. It's just a hunch.. an old man's fantasy.. but hey if you listen to Obie tell it, it could be a flashback... oi!

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

And before all is said and done it'll be no more than a dime a dozen peek a boo into the past. Nothing more.

It sounds as if you are saying there is nothing of value in past events, there was no exploration of the unknown, no exploration into the unknown?  Or perhaps there is some value, but ala carte, we can pick the ones that most appeal to our specific political agenda?  

How do you know whether or not future astronomical discoveries will benefit the human race?  It hasn’t happened yet.  In the past, a millennium ago, would you stand on the shore of a distant western Pacific island, watching your village’s voyaging canoe set out into vast uncharted waters, yelling at those on board “where are you going?  There’s nothing out there!  Nothing more than dime a dozen waves - -  after wave after wave…”

[iquetzal]

A warp-based acceleration pod is not only feasible, it may be much closer to implementation than people realize.
There is a good chance that this breakthrough will occur in secret, since governments will waste no time in weaponizing it.
There is no need for recourse to exotic states of matter, extreme high-energies, etc. It can be accomplished with a supermagnet with a device driver that overloads the Holevo Bound of information density of the quantum vacuum. This is the mechanism that accelerates super-fast pulsars to relativistic velocities before they exit the galaxy.
The solutions to the radiation and dust impact issues are also straightforward and off-the-shelf.
But the deal breaker may be Navigation.
Interstellar objects are not located where they appear in the sky. We are seeing them where they were centuries or millennia ago, from a unique point in space relative to the paths light takes through the galaxy. A given 3-D model of stellar positions for the galaxy will only be valid for positions within a few parsecs of the earth's current position. As you get further and further away in interstellar space, your navigation model of the galaxy will become more and more noisy and uncertain. The position of the interstellar planet you are attempting to rendezvous will be unknown within a sizeable area of uncertainty.
This is where Polynesian concepts of wayfinding become relevant, and even essential.
UH needs to establish a School of Interstellar Navigation based upon adaptation of Polynesian principles. And it needs to do it now.
If we do not pull this off in the next 20-30 years, it is never going to happen. May already be too late.

[AaronM]

What if we find this habitable planet next week?  How many light years will it take to get there?  How many decades would it take to create the technology to transport a seed group to go forth and multiply.  Should we take consolation that having trashed our planet a very few of us might be able to go trash another one?

What if we get there and our new neighbors consider us person non grata given our track record with planetary stewardship?