TMT and finding
a ‘New Earth’
The Thirty Meter Telescope has staggered in flames into darkness, but as with many a horror show, this may not be the end of the story.
A feckless Hawaii government and so-called “astronomy community”have been poor partners with TMT. When protesters lawlessly blockaded the road to Maunakea with old people in lawn chairs, the government did nothing and woke astronomers’ response was applause. Well, woke astronomers now have choke telescopes in Chile, courtesy of diverted TMT funding.
TMT is not just about local politics. Stephen Hawking, a leading physicist of his day, stated that humanity will absolutely go extinct if it does not find and inhabit another earth. This is a well-informed opinion, because science and history give sad evidence that global mass extinctions have killed most life on Earth multiple times. Another one is certain, and our days on Earth are numbered not only as individuals, but as a species.
Absent TMT, searches for another Earth for humanity will be blind to half of the sky. The biggest space telescope is the James Webb ST with a light-gathering area of 33 square meters. TMT will have a light-gathering area of over 706 square meters — 21 times more than Webb.
Being in the same hemisphere as Chile, TMT could link up with the giant Magellan telescope via interferometry, yielding a resolving aperture of over 6,600 miles. To find a New Earth, such resolving power is crucial. Absent TMT, this capability for humanity will never exist. Not ever.
Hawaii and humanity need a master-class telescope dedicated 100% to the singular task of locating an exoplanet of earth mass orbiting in the habitable zone of a G-type star — a problem that is much more difficult than people realize, because nothing outside the solar system is located where it appears to be in the sky. But trackless way-finding is a Polynesian cultural tradition.
As for a warp drive to power a starship to New Earth, at the close of the 19th century academic scientists were as certain of the impossibility of mechanized flight through the air as they are now certain of the impossibility of interstellar spaceflight. They are wrong again. We are at most a decade away from a functional warp drive delivering 1 G propulsion to relativistic velocity. Like mechanized flight, the breakthrough will not come from a government agency or academia, but without warning from a nameless renegade workshop.
As a privately funded venture, there is nothing to prevent TMT from becoming an exclusively Hawaiian cultural enterprise, complete with mountaintop heiau as an entrance to the sacred space celebrating Hawaii’s rightful place on the world stage. Construction of both could proceed simultaneously. Because what has more aloha than finding a new home for humanity from atop sacred Maunakea? What imaginable argument exists against this enterprise?
The only issues are money and will. As for money, TMT is well into development with over $2 billion already spent. There are many more billions in private hands looking for a noble cause — and survival of the human species qualifies. All Hawaii has to do is think outside the box and step up to this opportunity with aloha.
As for will: The politics of hate and fear is easy, and aloha is hard. The usual suspects will resist. But the extinction of humanity is an over-the-top demand by a lawless band of activists for their provincial politics to prevail. The world will gift TMT to Hawaii if Hawaii will accept it, but the world will not fight childish legal battles against cultural Bolsheviks under a feckless government to gift such an immense prize to the undeserving.
Hawaii turning its back on astronomy is like Kansas turning its back on wheat farming. Hawaii is on the cusp of a historic destiny, or a descent into tragic farce. But no one is going to do this for us. Certainly not politicians, bureaucrats, lawyers or political activists.
If stripping telescopes from the best location on Earth for telescopes is all Hawaii offers, then Hawaii gets the Darwin Award on behalf of the human species. Fortunately, the ancient aloha and genius that brought Hawaiian ancestors to these islands almost 2,000 years ago still lives.
Perhaps enough will realize that a time their ancestors recognized has returned, and enough will step forward for the grand enterprise to make it happen. This issue is much bigger than a telescope.
Kahea mai na hoku i na aina hou (the stars call to new lands).
John Powers
Pahoa
