Advancing Astronomy In America Astronomers have decided the most important thing in astronomy will be the hunt for alien life. Stephen Hawking said this was one of the worst things we could do and was basing his opinion on what happened to less advanced cultures on earth when confronted by superior ones. Carl Sagan said the search for extraterrestrial life has great merit even if we don’t find what we are looking for. What does the average person think about searching for alien life? There are a lot of different opinions being voiced about this. Some take the same track as Hawking and think we should be careful what we wish for. These people believe there is a great chance if an alien race finds out about our beautiful planet, they will want it for themselves. Could these people be right? Movies like Alien have put the fear of God in these people. Another group believes it would be beneficial to find aliens because if they are more advanced than us, they will help us with our problems. I don’t know why they think this. Maybe it is because of what they see in the movies like the movie ET. He was a friendly alien, but it was only a movie. Then there is the group who believe in non-interference. This is the theme of science fiction shows like Star Trek where they have certain criteria which must be met before they interact with an alien race. They have to be able to have conquered warp drive. The idea is by then the culture knows pretty much what is going on and that humans are not gods or anything like that. Lastly there is this group, probably the largest group, who believe we have already been contacted by aliens and all those UFOs which are now called UAPs are piloted by aliens, or at least some of them. As the UFO phenomenon continues more people are feeling this way. It is hard to disregard what is going on in our skies. A report has come out outlining the highest priorities and recommendations for U.S. astronomy. It is asking for a lot of goodies for our astronomers and most of the stuff seems to be aimed at finding alien life. As of the writing of this article the large Webb telescope is not yet launched and one of the things being asked for is a large telescope which will be tied into other methods of observation to give a more complete picture of what we are seeing. The idea behind it is to allow us for the first time to actually see an exoplanet. The cost is estimated to be one billion dollars more than the Webb telescope, but we know it will end up being a lot more. The original price for the Webb telescope was 5 billion dollars but it was delayed by years and the cost went to almost 9 billion dollars. I have to wonder what happened to the idea of building a telescope in a moon crater which would be huge and allow for unprecedented viewing. Originally telescope lenses were measured in inches, recently they are being measured in feet and the one on the moon would be measured in miles, being said to be one half mile in diameter. By the way the current one being talked about is a radio telescope, but in the past, there was talk of an optical one using swirling mercury for a mirror. When we lost our radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, due to a collapse, the Chinese were finishing up their build of an even bigger one and we didn’t seem to be too upset. I had wondered why at the time but since then I realized there is a new proposal to replace our VLA or Very Large Array set of movable radio telescopes with more advanced ones. The Chinese scope is not able to be moved around. The telescopes in the array can be configured many different ways and even set up to act as one big telescope. If you add enough units, they can dwarf the Chinese telescope. There are other things in the report which astronomers would like to do and that is increase the budget for two projects already started and they are the Giant Magellan Telescope known as the GMT and the Thirty Meter Telescope known as the TMT. The extra money is to be used to improve the devices. When I was young the biggest telescope in the world was Mount Palomar and it had a mirror of 200 inches. Today it is dwarfed by many professional telescopes. The TMT has mirrors totaling about 1,180 inches. The GMT telescope has mirrors of 965 inches. This would have been unheard of years ago because only one mirror was used and the 200 inch one was considered a miracle of engineering at the time. It wasn’t just because of the size but also because it had to be perfectly milled and the material it was made from had to have the most resistance available for expanding and contracting. Different kinds of instruments have been built, and are being suggested to be built, or are in the process of being built. There is something called the Cosmic Microwave Background Stage 4 Observatory. The purpose for this device is to survey the Big Bang’s afterglow. The Big Bang is the way most scientists believe our universe was created and that is by an explosion. There is no doubt science is fascinated with not only wanting to find if alien life exists, but how the universe works. We have learned a lot about the mechanics of the universe but there is still more questions to be answered, a lot more. While we are trying to find out if other life exists, some scientists are trying to find out if other universes exist. Along with this is the hunt for other dimensions. Then there are also things we think we know, but may come to find those things do not always work the same way. One question which was brought up from time to time is does physics work the same in all the different galaxies of the universe? It probably does, but can we really be sure until we go to other galaxies? There is a lot we have to learn and one thing is what is inside black holes. Some of expressed a theory there could be other planetary systems inside. A report by astronomers which is put out is known as a wish list, but when the last one came out, some of the items were accepted and acted on.
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