Science! (6 Viewers)

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In recent decades, we've learned huge amounts about the universe and its history. The rapidly developing technology of telescopes—both on Earth and in space—has been a key part of this process, and those that are due to start operating over the next two decades should push the boundaries of our understanding of cosmology much further.

All observatories have a list of science objectives before they switch on, but it is their unexpected discoveries that can have the biggest impact. Many surprise advances in cosmology were driven by new technology, and the next telescopes have powerful capabilities.

Still, there are gaps, such as a lack of upcoming space telescopes for ultraviolet and visible light astronomy. Politics and national interests have slowed scientific progress. Financial belts are tightening at even the most famous observatories.

The biggest new telescopes are being built in the mountains of Chile. The Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) will house a mirror the size of four tennis courts, under a huge dome in the Atacama desert.

Reflecting telescopes like ELT work by using a primary mirror to collect light from the night sky, then reflecting it off other mirrors to a camera. Larger mirrors collect more light and see fainter objects.

Another ground-based telescope under construction in Chile is the Vera C. Rubin telescope. Rubin's camera is the largest ever built: the size of a small car and weighing about three tons. Its 3,200 megapixels will photograph the whole sky every three days to spot moving objects. Over the course of 10 years, these photographs will be combined to form a massive time-lapse video of the universe.

Astronomy used to be a physically demanding job, requiring travel to remote telescopes in dark sites–-but many astronomers began working from home long before COVID. In the late 20th century, major ground observatories started to put in place technology to allow astronomers to control telescopes for observations at night, even when they were not there in person. Remote observing is now commonplace, carried out via the internet...........

 
Optimus Prime said:
In recent decades, we've learned huge amounts about the universe and its history. The rapidly developing technology of telescopes—both on Earth and in space—has been a key part of this process, and those that are due to start operating over the next two decades should push the boundaries of our understanding of cosmology much further.

All observatories have a list of science objectives before they switch on, but it is their unexpected discoveries that can have the biggest impact. Many surprise advances in cosmology were driven by new technology, and the next telescopes have powerful capabilities.

Still, there are gaps, such as a lack of upcoming space telescopes for ultraviolet and visible light astronomy. Politics and national interests have slowed scientific progress. Financial belts are tightening at even the most famous observatories.

The biggest new telescopes are being built in the mountains of Chile. The Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) will house a mirror the size of four tennis courts, under a huge dome in the Atacama desert.

Reflecting telescopes like ELT work by using a primary mirror to collect light from the night sky, then reflecting it off other mirrors to a camera. Larger mirrors collect more light and see fainter objects.

Another ground-based telescope under construction in Chile is the Vera C. Rubin telescope. Rubin's camera is the largest ever built: the size of a small car and weighing about three tons. Its 3,200 megapixels will photograph the whole sky every three days to spot moving objects. Over the course of 10 years, these photographs will be combined to form a massive time-lapse video of the universe.

Astronomy used to be a physically demanding job, requiring travel to remote telescopes in dark sites–-but many astronomers began working from home long before COVID. In the late 20th century, major ground observatories started to put in place technology to allow astronomers to control telescopes for observations at night, even when they were not there in person. Remote observing is now commonplace, carried out via the internet...........

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Thanks for posting stuff like this.

I read a recent "science book" that suggested a reason for the JWT indicating galaxies earlier than had been theorized: the act of humans observing them changed them (like electrons in the double-slit experiment). So I guess it was a pseudo-science book?
 
Consigliere said:
Thanks for posting stuff like this.

I read a recent "science book" that suggested a reason for the JWT indicating galaxies earlier than had been theorized: the act of humans observing them changed them (like electrons in the double-slit experiment). So I guess it was a pseudo-science book?
Click to expand...
Schrodinger's Galaxies is probably a legit theory.
 
After swapping machetes and binoculars for computer screens and laser mapping, a team of researchers have stumbled on a lost Maya city of temple pyramids, enclosed plazas and a reservoir, all of which had been hidden for centuries by the Mexican jungle.

The discovery in the south-eastern Mexican state of Campeche came about after Luke Auld-Thomas, an anthropologist at Northern Arizona University, began wondering whether non-archaeological uses of the state-of-the-art laser mapping known as lidar could help shed light on the Maya world.

“For the longest time, our sample of the Maya civilisation was a couple of hundred square kilometres total,” Auld-Thomas said.

“That sample was hard won by archaeologists who painstakingly walked over every square metre, hacking away at the vegetation with machetes, to see if they were standing on a pile of rocks that might have been someone’s home 1,500 years ago.”…….

www.theguardian.com

Lost Maya city with temple pyramids and plazas discovered in Mexico

Archaeologists draw on data from forest monitoring project to discover city potentially founded before AD150
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 
This isn't about the social issue that was studied, but about the Doctor refusing to follow protocol in scientific process because she didn't get the results she wanted.
Reading between the lines, it seems to me she was motivated by her desire to keep her bank account healthy more than her "belief" on the social issue at hand.

What's disturbing here is the willingness to suppress scientific findings that contradicted what the researcher hoped to prove. Frankly, to me, it smacks of the same sort of desire to control people as the reaction of the Catholic Church to Galileo in medieval times. Kudos to her research colleagues who called her out for not publishing the results even thought they were not happy with the results, either.

https://nypost.com/2024/10/23/us-ne...453&utm_content=332622453&utm_source=hs_email
 

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