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Wednesday, April 17, 2024

The world’s largest digital astronomy camera ever

After two decades of work, engineers from the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory are celebrating the completion of the world’s largest digital astronomy camera ever.


 https://thedebrief.org/does-slac-national-accelerator-laboratory-completes-worlds-largest-digital-astronomy-camera-ever/

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

The best and biggest is always impressive. Our priorities don't serve humankind though.
Why not invest the biggest research center to improve food safety and eliminate the need for processed food. The biggest housing systems to eliminate homelessness. You get my drift

Anonymous said...

"The best and biggest is always impressive. Our priorities don't serve humankind though.
Why not invest the biggest research center to improve food safety and eliminate the need for processed food. The biggest housing systems to eliminate homelessness. You get my drift"

No I do not get your drift and it makes no sense whatsoever if you think about it.

Anonymous said...

7:49 -- Isn't this partly to detect asteroids? If we had another Tunguska type event, it could destroy a lot of trees, and thereby raise the cost of housing. It could also have other bad effects, too, such as ending civilization or causing human extinction.

There is no "need" for processed food, I would think, and homelessness can be fixed by building homes, or placing the homeless in vacant properties -- there are many more vacant properties than homeless people at any given time in the United States so the problem is not related to a shortage of homes:

https://todayshomeowner.com/general/guides/highest-home-vacancy-rates/

Anonymous said...

How has space exploration benefited
Mankind so far? Other than discovering the infinity of space?

Anonymous said...

9:27 -- NASA used satellites to monitor the Ozone layer, this led in part to a worldwide ban and control over certain ozone-depleting chemicals which otherwise could have depleted ozone, causing skin cancers, blindness, and lowered agricultural production.

Anonymous said...

How has space exploration benefited
Mankind so far? Other than discovering the infinity of space?

4/19/2024 9:27 PM

Are you a troll? You have to be a troll. Even elementary school kids know about all the benefits. Try google, it has a long very long list. Better yet just try and think about....how could space exploration benefited my life? Try that before you even go to google. In fact next time you have a question about life in general do this. I

Anonymous said...

7:37 -- Actually, to be the Devil's advocate, technology does not always produce benefits, and whatever benefits there are may not be evenly distributed across society.

For example, the Apollo moon program led to advances in microelectronics and computing, which of course were in many ways far more valuable than any money spent on the program. This is part of the reason that silicon valley is so important today, relative to all other technology centers in the world.

But on an individual basis, of course, progress in technology also might be related to globalization, depletion of various resources and military conflicts related to that, military threats to the United States, social media threats to Democracy, internet pornography, fake news, job loss due to automation and AI, various stock and housing market bubbles and crashes, proliferation of WMD and asymmetric weapons such as drones, etc.

So, yes, it is entirely possible that technological progress could have various negative repercussions for many people. A historical example that might shed light on this, is the rapid progress in the early twentieth century. During that period, of course, airplanes were developed, cars were mass produced, there was progress in metallurgy, wireless communications, electronics, medicine, and ultimately the development of nuclear energy and weapons, development of chemical industries, measurement devices, optics, and so on. In particular, oil production rapidly grew, as did the provision of electricity to homes and industry.

Yet of course, there were two world wars that came out of this, the Holocaust, a stock market crash followed by the Great Depression, it led to both Communism and Fascism, and so forth. And the use and development of various forms of WMD, including chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, mass killings and genocide of various religious and ethnic groups, Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and also the Armenian genocide is another example, also numerous atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese (Unit 731 for example), communist Gulags and killings, etc etc.

Anonymous said...

There is a strange history to philosophy and the questioning of technology, by the way, I hope you will publish my previous comment pointing out that technological progress sometimes does cause various issues in that regard.

Heidegger, one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century, published a critique of technological advancement and the dangers it poses back in the 20th century, but he was also a supporter of the Nazi's in Germany:

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/is-heidegger-contaminated-by-nazism

https://theconversation.com/heidegger-in-ruins-grappling-with-an-anti-semitic-philosopher-and-his-troubling-rebirth-today-200826

https://youtu.be/gaVmEN-vGWk?si=GGORlyahz3ZysFDI

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Question_Concerning_Technology

The question concerning technology, Heidegger concludes, is one "concerning the constellation in which revealing and concealing, in which the coming to presence of the truth comes to pass."[7] In other words, it is finding truth. Heidegger presents art as a way to navigate this constellation, this paradox, because the artist, or the poet as Heidegger suggests, views the world as it is and as it reveals itself.[6]

Anonymous said...

4/21/2024 12:19 PM

The ratio of people dying in wars vs total people has been going down for hundreds of years. Every example you pointed out is wrong if you look at the actual numbers which you refuse to do. Again, think, do some statistics before you post.

Anonymous said...

4/21/2024 6:32 PM

On this point Heidegger was wrong. If you look at all the numbers in terms of longevity, reduction of violent deaths per every 100000, income and so on everything has gotten better with technology. All the numbers are out there.

"his paradox, because the artist, or the poet as Heidegger suggests, views the world as it is and as it reveals itself"

Sounds good, but is there any reason to believe this is true?

Anonymous said...

By the way many people don't know this, but many years after the Challenger disaster, NASA did eventually put a teacher in space, who was the backup candidate on the original flight. She trained as a mission specialist, and was very positive about the experience:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Morgan

Prior to her flight on STS-118, NASA seemed to limit Morgan's exposure to the press, but she did a series of interviews shortly before the start of the mission about what the crew of STS-118 would be doing to help build the International Space Station,[10][11][12][13] commenting, "You know, there's a great sense of pride to be able to be involved in a human endeavor that takes us all a little bit farther. When you look down and see our Earth, and you realize what we are trying to do as a human race, it's pretty profound."[14]

Anonymous said...

8:19 -- I don't think he was critiquing that technology actually "works", his complaints were elsewhere.

Also there are valid criticisms of his thought, but for better or worse his ideas have been very influential, they are popular at American universities for example :

https://lawliberty.org/book-review/the-destructive-impact-of-cultural-heideggerianism/

And yes, of course he was a Nazi, and there has been recently a great deal of anti-Semitism at some top American Universities, of course, most recently Columbia.

Anonymous said...

8:16 -- A lot of the wars in history were enabled or driven by various technologies too, consider for example how superior technologies enabled the discovery and conquest of the Americas by various European powers, in which many indigenous peoples suffered and died as a result.

There is certainly an incredibly long list of 19th century wars by the way, many of which you may not be familiar with even if you are a student of history:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars:_1800–1899

There is no doubt that these killed many people for example the American Civil War, the Napoleonic Wars, and the Taiping Rebellion, which many Americans are no doubt, not familiar with but in which many people died:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion

Certainly however, the two World Wars were incredibly destructive over large parts of Europe and Asia, there was the Holocaust, the rise of Communism and Fascism, and so forth as I mentioned : it is not controversial to associate this with the various technological developments of the early 20th century.

Anonymous said...


"By the way many people don't know this, but many years after the Challenger disaster, NASA did eventually put a teacher in space,"

They also wanted to put bigbird in space.

Many people don't know this but Reagan is kinda responsible for getting Challenger crew killed. He wanted the Challenger to in space for his state of the union address where he would talk to the teacher Christa McAullfe live. They had all sorts of warnings about the flight but did it anyway because Regan needed that moment.

Oh well.

Anonymous said...

Yes, also Reagan gave out free cheese from the huge stockpiles the government was hoarding at the time:

https://youtu.be/kvLMH0wb_0k?si=AWFnJVd5V0CFXaia

Following that of course, the government created programs to raise cheese production, and privatized the cheese stockpile.

The statistics show that cheese consumption has skyrocketed which may be one reason why many Americans are overweight:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/183785/per-capita-consumption-of-cheese-in-the-us-since-2000/

The US exports vast quantities of cheese as well, and is a major cheese importing nation too, although the monetary value of cheese exports exceeds imports:

https://trendeconomy.com/data/h2/UnitedStatesOfAmerica/0406

Anonymous said...

We start with cutting edge optics and get to cheese. The connection: A very powerful telescope will show us that the moon is indeed made out of cheese.

Anonymous said...

9:47 -- this must be why aliens keep abducting cows!

https://bakerlogy.com/products/ufo-cow-abduction

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