Day: August 25, 2019

Astronomer: ‘Magic’ Nights Make Hawaii Best Telescope Site

When starlight from billions of years ago zips across the universe and finally comes into focus on Earth, astronomers want their telescopes to be in the best locations possible to see what’s out there.

Despite years of legal battles and months of protests by Native Hawaiian opponents, the international coalition that wants to build the world’s largest telescope in Hawaii insists that the islands’ highest peak — Mauna Kea — is the best place for their $1.4 billion instrument.

But just barely.

Thirty Meter Telescope officials acknowledge that their backup site atop a peak on the Spanish Canary island of La Palma is a comparable observatory location, and that it wouldn’t cost more money or take extra time to build it there.

There’s also no significant opposition to putting the telescope on La Palma like there is in Hawaii, where some Native Hawaiians consider the mountain sacred and have blocked trucks from hauling construction equipment to Mauna Kea’s summit for more than a month.

But Hawaii has advantages that scientists say make it slightly better: higher altitude, cooler temperatures, and rare star-gazing moments that will allow the cutting-edge telescope to reach its full potential.

“Every once in a while at Mauna Kea, you get one of those magic nights,” said University of California, Santa Cruz astronomy and astrophysics professor Michael Bolte, a Thirty Meter Telescope board member. “When the air is super stable above the site, you get images that you simply couldn’t get anyplace else.”

Bolte, who has used existing Mauna Kea telescopes, said those “magic” Hawaii nights could hold discoveries that might be missed in La Palma.

“Let’s suppose one of your big science cases is to look for life on planets that are orbiting other stars,” he said. “The star is so much brighter than the planet you’re trying to observe, it’s really hard to do.”

The advanced optics and huge size of the Thirty Meter Telescope, especially if built at Mauna Kea’s higher altitude, could allow scientists to more easily detect potentially life-filled planets, Bolte said.

To see distant planets near bright stars, astronomers use telescopes to capture infrared light that emanates from the space objects.

But John Mather, an astrophysicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2006 for his work on the Big Bang theory, says there are other ways to get that data.

Mather, the senior project scientist for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, planned for launch into space in 2021, said the new instrument will be extremely effective at gathering infrared light. The atmosphere won’t get in the way of the telescope’s imaging capabilities because it won’t be on Earth.

Data from the Webb telescope can be combined with information from other Earth-based telescopes to compensate for the infrared advantage that Mauna Kea has over La Palma, Mather said.

He said Webb will open up “new territory that you’ll never be able to tackle from the ground.”

Mather is also working on a longer-term solution to the problem of seeing Earth-like planets orbiting distant stars, which he likened to seeing a “firefly next to a spotlight.”

It’s a large “star shade” that would be launched far into space and positioned to block bright stars while allowing telescopes on Earth to see the planets orbiting them.

Those advancements could level the playing field between places such as Mauna Kea and La Palma, said astrophysicist Avi Loeb, who chairs Harvard University’s astronomy department.

“One thing that you need to keep in mind is that humans can change the system as to compensate for the slightly worse conditions” in Spain, Loeb said. “In the end, it might perform as well or maybe even better.”

Loeb agreed that Mauna Kea is a slightly better location for infrared observations. But La Palma is “an excellent site, so there would be exceptional science done there,” he added.

The Native Hawaiian opponents call themselves “protectors” of Mauna Kea and aren’t concerned about their mountain’s advantages for astronomers. They just want the telescope group to abandon Hawaii.

That would “be a win for everyone,” said protest leader Kealoha Pisciotta shortly after Thirty Meter Telescope officials announced they would move forward with a building permit application for the La Palma site a few weeks ago.

“There’s lots of good science to be done from the Canary Islands,” Pisciotta said.

Not all Native Hawaiians are opposed to the telescope. Some tout the educational and economic opportunities it would bring to the Big Island. Others have compared modern astronomers to their Polynesian ancestors who used stars to navigate their wooden outriggers across the Pacific and discover new lands — including Hawaii.

Mauna Kea stands nearly 14,000 feet (4,300 meters) above sea level, more than twice as high as the Spanish site that is already home to the world’s largest optical telescope. Like Hawaii’s Big Island, the Spain site has good weather, a stable atmosphere and very little light pollution.

Thirty Meter Telescope would be a next generation model that’s expected to transform ground-based astronomy — allowing scientists to see deeper into space than previously possible. Its large mirror will produce sharper, more detailed images of space.

“You can get images that are 12 times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope,” Bolte said.

And most of the same science planned for Hawaii would still get done in Spain — it would just take longer.

“Depending on the kind of science you want to do, it’s going to be a 10% hit to a 50% hit in speed,” Bolte said. “You are going to have to observe that much longer at La Palma to get the same quality data.”

José Manuel Vilchez, an astronomer with Spain’s Higher Council of Scientific Research and a former member of the scientific committee of the Astrophysics Institute of the Canary Islands, said that building the telescope on La Palma would not be a downgrade.

“We are talking about the best of the best. One is a 10, the other is a 9.9,” Vilchez said. “We are talking about decimals.”

But for astronomers, decimals can make the difference between seeing something extraordinary and missing it.

“Mauna Kea, since it is higher, would have a thinner atmospheric layer and would observe more in certain infrared ranges,” Vilchez said. “The possibility of capturing the image is lower” on La Palma.

Vilchez also said there is greater public support for the telescope in Spain and that the cost of operating it at a lower elevation would be cheaper.

On Mauna Kea “you are further away from the base and the cost goes up,” Vilchez said. “In the Canary Islands the institutional support is 100% and 99% of citizens support the astronomy work.”

That lack of opposition is something officials cannot claim for Mauna Kea.

The telescope group’s Bolte said what began as opposition to the project has “become the focus of the whole Hawaiian sovereignty and self-determination” movement and is a reflection of how Native Hawaiians have felt “displaced from their own lands” for over a century.

“Now that they have the attention of everyone by stopping this telescope, how can that be used to somehow take some steps forward in the well-being of Native Hawaiians?” he asked.

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Sudan Flood Death Toll Reaches 62: State Media

Heavy rainfall and flash floods have killed 62 people in Sudan and left 98 others injured, the official SUNA news agency reported on Sunday.

Sudan has been hit by torrential rains since the start of July, affecting nearly 200,000 people in at least 15 states across the country including the capital Khartoum.

The worst affected area is the White Nile state in the south.

Flooding of the Nile river remains “the biggest problem”, SUNA said, citing a health ministry official.

On Friday the United Nations said 54 people had died due to the heavy rains.

It said more than 37,000 homes had been destroyed or damaged, quoting figures from the government body it partners with in the crisis response.

“Humanitarians are concerned by the high likelihood of more flash floods,” the UN said, adding that the rainy season was expected to last until October.

The floods are having a lasting humanitarian impact on communities, with cut roads, damaged water points, lost livestock and the spread of water-borne diseases by insects.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said an extra $150 million were needed from donors to respond to surging waters, in addition to the $1.1 billion required for the overall humanitarian situation in Sudan.

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Sudan PM Seeks End toCountry’s Pariah Status

Sudan’s new prime minister says in an interview that ending his country’s international pariah status and drastically cutting military spending are prerequisites for rescuing a faltering economy.

Abdalla Hamdok, a well-known economist, told The Associated Press on Sunday that he has already talked to U.S. officials about removing Sudan from Washington’s list of countries sponsoring terrorism and portrayed their reaction as positive. He says that “a democratic Sudan is not a threat to anybody in the world.”

He also hopes to drastically cut Sudan’s military spending which he says makes up a large chunk of the state budget.

Hamdok was sworn in last week as the leader of Sudan’s transitional government. His appointment came four months after the overthrow of autocratic leader Omar al-Bashir, who ruled for nearly three decades.

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Iraqi Militia Says New Drone Attack Killed Commander

 Two members of an Iran-backed Iraqi paramilitary force say that a new drone attack has killed one commander and wounded another near the border with Syria.
 
Officials from the Hezbollah Brigades, separate from the Lebanese groups of the same name, said the drone attack occurred Sunday near the Qaim border crossing. 
 
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to journalists about the matter. 
 
Iraq’s Hezbollah Brigades operate under the umbrella of the state-sanctioned militias known collectively as the Popular Mobilization Forces. Many of them are supported by Iran. 
 
If confirmed, it would be the latest in a series of attacks that have targeted PMF bases and weapons depot in Iraq. U.S. officials have said that Israel was behind at least one of them.

 

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Iran’s Envoy Makes Surprise Visit at Site of G-7 Summit

Last updated at 2:40p.m.

Iran’s top diplomat, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, showed up Sunday at the French city hosting the G7 summit of top world leaders, but did not meet with U.S. officials during the brief visit.

Zarif’s appearance in Biarritz, where U.S. President Donald Trump has been meeting with leaders of six other countries, came as a surprise.   When asked about the development, Trump had no comment.

But Zarif’s visit was at the behest of French President Emmanuel Macron, who has had talks with his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, about tensions in the Persian Gulf region that stem from Trump’s withdrawal last year from the 2015 international accord aimed at restraining Tehran’s nuclear weapons program.

Macron had met with Zarif on Friday in Paris before the summit opened, but invited him back to the Atlantic coastal town where the summit is being held after tense exchanges among the world leaders about Iran at their Saturday night dinner.

Demonstrators of the National Council of Resistance of Iran demonstrate on the Trocadero square Friday, Aug. 23, 2019 in Paris as Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif is in France. Poster reads: get out.

Asked about a possible Trump meeting with Zarif, a French diplomat said, “Not at this stage.” But U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin noted that Trump has in the past not “set preconditions” on negotiations with Iran.

Macron had lunch with Trump on Saturday, and, according to French sources, outlined his plan to ease the West’s tensions with Iran. The French leader is calling for allowing Iran to export its oil for a short time, fully implement the 2015 agreement, reduce conflict in the Gulf region and open new talks.

Macron has sought to salvage the international agreement, but Trump has accused the French leader of sending “mixed signals” to Iran over possible talks with Washington.

“Iran is in serious financial trouble,” Trump said on Twitter earlier this month, because of the U.S. leader’s reimposition of sanctions against Iran as he abrogated the accord.

 “They want desperately to talk to the U.S.,” Trump said, “but are given mixed signals from all of those purporting to represent us, including President Macron of France.”

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At G-7, Trump May Find Common Ground on Gender Equality, Africa

U.S. President Donald Trump is in Biarritz, France, for the G-7 summit, where he will be meeting world leaders who oppose his stances on many issues, including tariffs, Brexit, climate protection, China, Iran and Russia. 

But in this meeting of the leaders of the world’s major industrialized countries, there could be areas of cooperation where Trump is willing to offer support, or at least not resist: women’s empowerment and Africa. 

French President Emmanuel Macron, as the G-7 2019 president and summit host, has chosen combating inequality as the theme, with gender equality and partnership with Africa as key issues. He will be pushing several initiatives, including the Biarritz Partnership for Gender Equality and Partnership for the African Sahel. Macron also will be calling for renewed support for Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa. 

Despite Trump’s skepticism of foreign aid and his rejection of globalism, including his famous statement in front of the 2018 U.N. General Assembly that the U.S. “will not tell you how to live or work or worship,” his administration has indicated it may support at least some of these initiatives, noting that the White House has launched similar efforts. 

On Sunday Trump will participate in a G-7 working lunch on inequality and a session on the partnership with Africa later in the afternoon. 

FILE – Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, executive director of U.N. Women, speaks during the opening ceremony of the Women’s Forum Americas in Mexico City, May 30, 2019.

Biarritz partnership for gender equality 

Earlier this year, Macron formed a G-7 Gender Equality Advisory Council whose members include Executive Director of U.N. Women Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka and gender equality activist and actor Emma Watson. The council is tasked with identifying legislative measures worldwide to combat gender violence and discrimination, as well as to improve girls’ access to education and support women’s economic empowerment. 

Macron is pushing countries to join the partnership and adopt the laws and public policies identified by the council. 

He also will call for renewed support for African women’s credit financing through the Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa initiative, a pan-African mechanism to reduce the cost of accessing credit and bridge the $42 billion financing gap being faced by women on the continent. 

The White House has not announced whether it will sign on to any of the G-7 initiatives on gender equality. But a senior administration official told reporters that global women’s empowerment is a “huge priority for this administration” and a message “we really want to drive home this weekend in France,” citing the launch of the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity (W-GDP) initiative and commitment as a founding member to We-Fi, a partnership hosted by the World Bank Group to finance women entrepreneurs. 

W-GDP was launched by the White House in February 2019, and it is billed as “the first whole-of-government effort to advance global women’s economic empowerment.” 

The president’s daughter and adviser, Ivanka Trump, is leading the administration’s efforts on global women’s empowerment.

Renewed focus on Africa 

Africa is Europe’s immediate neighbor, and instability on the southern side of the Mediterranean has an impact on the northern side, with the migrant crisis being the most visible example. 

With that in mind, Germany and France are proposing a new partnership with Africa, including an initiative to enhance international commitment for the Sahel, a region facing multiple challenges ranging from the impact of climate change to the threat of terrorism. 

The G-5 Sahel countries are Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger. 

Macron also has invited Senegal, Egypt, Burkina Faso, South Africa and Rwanda to join the G-7 countries in discussions about issues important to the continent. 

The formal invitation of African partners to the G-7 “opens an opportunity to drive forward key items on the African agenda, where priorities should be placed, how they should be financed, what the necessary coalitions for success are,” Yvonne Mburu told VOA. Mburu is founder and CEO of Nexakli, a global network of African health professionals and member of Macron’s Presidential Council of Africa

Mburu said the litmus test would be whether there will be measurable outcomes from the G-7 deliberations, and whether there is an accompanying mobilization of financial resources. 

Sahel Alliance 

At the summit, G-7 leaders will be encouraged to join the Sahel Alliance, which seeks to economically develop the region and strengthen support for members’ national security. 

The U.S. government has already expressed doubts about financing a new U.N.-backed mission in the Sahel, but it might be open to the new format of cooperation that the French team wants to discuss, said Karoline Postel-Vinay, a research professor at the Paris-based institute Sciences Po. “However, as we now know, American foreign strategy seems predictably unpredictable,” she added. 

Ivanka Trump leaves the African Women’s Empowerment Dialogue, with Overseas Private Investment Corp. acting CEO David Bohigian, right, and security staff, April 15, 2019, at the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa building in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Despite not outwardly obstructing the G-7 agenda on Africa, it’s unclear how much substantive support the administration would provide. 

A White House statement ahead of the summit applauded the efforts of partners and the international community to promote peace and stability in Africa but did not mention whether the U.S. would provide additional economic or security assistance in the Sahel as called for by Macron. 

The White House instead pointed to its Prosper Africa private-financing initiative and the BUILD Act as proof of the administration’s commitment. The law was passed in 2018 and aims to facilitate private capital in developing low-income economies. 

Analysts say the administration’s policy on Africa is focused more on investment, in particular in the context of countering China. 

While it hasn’t abandoned any of the pillars of focus that previous administrations have had on the continent, the Trump administration is “doing less with less,” said Judd Devermont, director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 

“The administration is running the traps on some of the security stuff,” said Devermont, “but without the same robustness of previous administrations and certainly not anywhere near where we were in democracy and governance.” 

He added that Trump does not have the personal connection that President Barack Obama had with the continent, nor the interest in development that President George W. Bush had. 

On Thursday, Trump scrapped a proposal to freeze more than $4 billion in foreign aid after objections from lawmakers of both parties and his own Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Divisions elsewhere 

While there may be some consensus on gender equality and Africa, there clearly are deep divisions between members. 

For the first time in its history, this summit will not produce a joint communique amid deepening divisions between leaders over myriad issues. 

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6 Hurt in Lightning Strike at PGA Tour Championship 

Six people were injured Saturday when lightning struck a 60-foot pine at the Tour Championship where they were taking cover from rain and showered them with debris, Atlanta police said. 

A pine tree is stripped of bark after being hit by lightning at East Lake Golf Club during the third round of the Tour Championship golf tournament, Aug. 24, 2019, in Atlanta.

The third round of the season-ending PGA Tour event at East Lake Golf Club had been suspended for about 30 minutes because of storms in the area, and fans were instructed to seek shelter. The strike hit the top of the tree just off the 16th tee and shattered the bark all the way to the bottom. 

Ambulances streamed into the private club about 6 miles east of downtown Atlanta. The players already had been taken into the clubhouse before the lightning hit. 

Brad Uhl of Atlanta was among those crammed under a hospital tent to the right of the 16th hole that was open to the public. 

“There was just a big explosion and then an aftershock so strong you could feel the wind from it,” Uhl said after the last of the ambulances pulled out of the golf course. “It was just a flash out of the corner of the eye.” 

Atlanta police spokesman James H. White III said five men and one female juvenile were injured in the lightning strike. He said they were taken to hospitals for further treatment, all of them alert, conscious and breathing. 

The PGA Tour canceled the rest of golf Saturday, with the round to resume at 8 a.m. Sunday, followed by the final round. 

Last week at the BMW Championship in the Chicago suburbs, Phil Mickelson was delayed getting to the golf course when lightning struck the top of his hotel, causing a precautionary evacuation. 

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Global Warming Increases Threat of Himalayas’ Killer Lakes

When a “Himalayan tsunami” roars down from the rooftop of the world, water from an overflowing glacial lake obeys gravity. Obliterating everything in its path, a burst is predictable only in its destructiveness. 
 
“There was no meaning in it,” one person who withstood the waters in India’s Himalayas told a Public Radio International reporter. “It didn’t give anyone a chance to survive.”  
 
Christian Huggel, a professor at the University of Zurich in Switzerland who specializes in glaciology and geomorphodynamics (the study of changing forms of geologic surfaces), said thousands of cubic meters of water moving down a mountain “is really quite destructive and it can happen suddenly.” 
 
That water comes from glacial lake outburst floods, or GLOFs, which are increasing in frequency as climate change increases the rate of glacial melting. This catastrophic lake drainage occurs wherever there are glaciers in places such as Peru and Alaska.  
 
The most devastating GLOFs occur in the Himalayan regions of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal and the Tibetan Plateau. When combined, the area has the third-largest accumulation of snow and ice after Antarctica and the Arctic. 
 
Melting glaciers 
 
In the Himalayas, climate change melted glaciers by a vertical foot and half of ice each year from 2000 to 2016, according to a study released in June’s Science Advances by Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y.  
 
That is twice the rate of melting from 1975 to 2000.  
 
Local people have noticed the change. In a 2016 interview from the Everest basecamp, Dr. Nima Namgyal Sherpa told VOA that in the past, the glacial streams in the mid-Everest region started flowing in May, but the Sherpas now see the flow beginning in April. 
 
That melted snowpack seeps down to fill mountainside indentations to form glacial lakes. As global warming accelerates the melting, the lakes are expanding, as is their number and threat, monitored in some areas with automated sensors and manual early warning systems by army and police personnel with communication gear. 
 
“Bigger lakes may increase the risk of catastrophic dam failure,” Joseph Shea, a glacier hydrologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, told the magazine Science.  
 

The retreating ice of the Pastoruri glacier is seen in the Huascaran National Park in Huaraz, Peru, Aug. 12, 2016. The melting of glaciers has put cities like Huaraz at risk of what scientists call a “glof,” or glacial lake outburst flood.

Today, there are more than a thousand glacial lakes on the Tibetan Plateau, with more than 130 larger than 0.1 square kilometer in Nepal alone. The lakes threaten the livelihoods and lives of tens of thousands of people who live in some of the world’s most remote areas.
 
On June 12, 2016, a GLOF near Mount Everest sent 2 million cubic meters of water toward the Nepalese village of Chukhung, which lost just one outhouse to the torrents, in part because scientists warned residents in the area about the approaching danger. 
 
Weeks later, on July 5, a GLOF near the village of Chaku registered on seismometers, which had been installed after an earthquake the year before, as a “huge pulse of energy,” Kristen Cook, a geologist at the GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences, told EOS, an online site that covers earth and space science news.
 
Examining satellite images, Cook and her colleagues found the GLOF moved boulders as large as 6 meters in diameter. 
 
Early warning systems 
 
This year, on July 7, a GLOF early warning system of weather monitoring stations and river discharge sensors saved lives in Pakistan’s Golain Valley, which has more than 50 glaciers and nine glacial lakes.  
 
The event destroyed villages, roads and bridges, but there were no reported deaths. A shepherd located upstream from the valley called authorities to report the burst, which gave communities downstream as much as an hour to evacuate.  
 
“Our standing crops [and] apple and apricot orchards have been completely destroyed,” Safdar Ali, whose shop was heavily damaged as the water swept away livestock, stored grain, irrigation channels and micro hydropower plants, told Reuters.  
 
“I see no loss of human life this time as a positive,” Amanullah Khan, assistant country director for the U.N. Development Program (UNDP) told Reuters. “It shows our training has been a success.”  
 
The UNDP program, which helped establish flood protection systems in the area starting in 2011, has installed small-scale drainage systems and mini-dams, and taught people in the remote region survival skills, such as simple first aid, because the arrival of skilled emergency help can be delayed by the rugged topography. 
 
The International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) and other international groups are setting up early warning systems for glacial lakes in Nepal. 
 
Local governments are taking preventive measures, such as removing loose rocks and debris that make the bursts of water even more destructive. Authorities are also draining glacial lakes to reduce the amount of water released by a breach, and they are discouraging settlement in GLOF hazard zones.  
 
“If the lakes burst above the villages up in the Everest area, up between 12,000 to 13,000 feet, there are villages all the way downstream and they will wipe [away] some of these villages,” said Norbu Tenzin Norgyal, whose father, Sherpa Tenzin Norgyal, summited Mount Everest with Sir Edmund Hillary in 1953. “The danger is real.” 

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