04-08-2015, 03:53 AM
Who benefits?
When someone first realized the world was not flat, no one benefited, until someone else also realized they wouldn't sail off the edge of the earth.
When another person discovered the earth revolved around the sun who benefited? Certainly not Galileo. He was treated as a pariah for telling the truth. But later on that knowledge has made a difference to humanity.
Sir Isaac Newton and gravity? He didn't make his fortune off that discovery, but it certainly has had applications for all of us in the present day.
What will the TMT discover? Only time will tell. As an example, what if it detects an asteroid far out in the solar system heading toward earth, for a direct hit on the Hawaiian Islands? Because it's capable of finding the most distant objects it also gives us (with help from Bruce Willis) enough time to work out a plan to nudge the asteroid away from earth's orbit.
Then we can continue to fight another day, examining the day to day minutiae of who's right and who's wrong about this little thing and that little thing...
When someone first realized the world was not flat, no one benefited, until someone else also realized they wouldn't sail off the edge of the earth.
When another person discovered the earth revolved around the sun who benefited? Certainly not Galileo. He was treated as a pariah for telling the truth. But later on that knowledge has made a difference to humanity.
Sir Isaac Newton and gravity? He didn't make his fortune off that discovery, but it certainly has had applications for all of us in the present day.
What will the TMT discover? Only time will tell. As an example, what if it detects an asteroid far out in the solar system heading toward earth, for a direct hit on the Hawaiian Islands? Because it's capable of finding the most distant objects it also gives us (with help from Bruce Willis) enough time to work out a plan to nudge the asteroid away from earth's orbit.
Then we can continue to fight another day, examining the day to day minutiae of who's right and who's wrong about this little thing and that little thing...
“We do this thing not because it is easy, but because we thought it would be easy.”