![]() Organized by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, six Decadal Surveys have set the course of U.S. Projects such as NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope owe their existence, in part, to coveted endorsements from Decadals of yore, and the practice has spread to several other disciplines that now undertake Decadal Surveys of their own. In the U.S., astronomers have managed these competing ambitions by devising a process that has become the envy of the scientific world: the Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey, a once-in-10-years exercise that recommends and ranks the community’s priorities for the next decade-embodied, eventually, by major new federally-sponsored observatories on the ground and in space. Yet such projects so strain the fraction of public and private funds allocated to astronomy that only a few-perhaps just one-can be prioritized at a time, leading to pileups of also-ran proposals and anxious researchers awaiting a rare chance to open new windows on the universe. Black holes sometimes shine in x-rays, for instance, whereas Earth-like exoplanets are best studied in optical and infrared light. How the authority will act depends on who gets appointed to serve as its members, a process that will be completed when the legislature reconvenes next year.Ask astronomers what question they most want to answer, and you will get scattered responses: How did the first stars, galaxies and black holes form? What is the nature of dark matter and dark energy? Are we alone?Įach question demands its own large telescope: no ultimate, one-size-fits-all instrument will ever exist, for none can be made to gather each and every kind of cosmic light. "I'm confident that astronomy can thrive in Mauna Kea and in Hawaii before 2033 and after," O'Meara said, "Because we're coming to a place of mutual stewardship - of everybody recognizing that it's the mauna at the center of this and not any one player." Once it has full control over the mountain, the group will be tasked with negotiating new leases for the mountain's new and existing observatories to prevent them from being decommissioned.ĭespite the uncertainty surrounding how negotiations will go, O'Meara said he thinks the creation of the new authority was a step in the right direction. ![]() John O'Meara, chief scientist at the Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, said that means the next few years will be crucial for astronomy in Hawaii. The appointment of members to the new authority will be finalized later.Īndrew Richard Hara/W. They've had control over managing the land there ever since. This granted the university the right to use the land for scientific purposes, and to sublease land on the mountain to those wanting to build observatories on its peak. ![]() More than 11,000 acres of state-owned land on the mountain were leased to the University of Hawaii in 1968. And in our cosmology, and many of our ancient chants, Mauna Kea, the mountain, is the first born out of that union." "We do, to this day, believe that Mauna Kea, and the summit area in particular, is the place where the Earth Mother, or Papa, meets the Sky Father, Wākea," she said. ![]() Noe Noe Wong-Wilson, the executive director of the Lālākea Foundation, which aims to preserve the cultural practices and traditions of native Hawaiians. The law is an important step towards ensuring the protection of Mauna Kea, a mountain native Hawaiians consider sacred, says Dr. Science NASA's James Webb telescope reveals the universe as we've never seen it before
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