Astronomers Find the Calmest Place On Earth 231
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by
Soulskill
from the i-can-see-clearly-now dept.
from the i-can-see-clearly-now dept.
The Narrative Fallacy writes "Live Science reports that astronomers in search of the perfect site to take pictures of the heavens have combined data from satellites, ground stations and climate models in a study to assess the many factors that affect image quality — cloud cover, temperature, sky-brightness, water vapor, wind speeds and atmospheric turbulence. They have pinpointed the coldest, driest, calmest place on earth, known simply as Ridge A, 13,297 feet high on the Antarctic Plateau. 'It's so calm that there's almost no wind or weather there at all,' says study leader Will Saunders, of the Anglo-Australian Observatory. 'The astronomical images taken at Ridge A should be at least three times sharper than at the best sites currently used by astronomers.' Located within the Australian Antarctic Territory, the site is 89 miles from the PLATO (PLATeau Observatory) international robotic observatory. The new site would be superior to the best existing observatories on high mountain tops in Hawaii and Chile, Saunders says. 'Because the sky there is so much darker and drier, it means that a modestly-sized telescope would be as powerful as the largest telescopes anywhere else on earth.'"
A hash bar in Amsterdam... (Score:0, Insightful)
...after half a blue xanax.
Re:For Earthbound, mebbe... (Score:2, Insightful)
But the downside is that it costs like $100 billion to build and man[1] one there. I doubt the Antarctic place would approach one billion.
[1] Not sure our robotic remote repair technology is up to the task.
Re:For Earthbound, mebbe... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Australian Antarctic Territory ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Located within the Australian Antarctic Territory
Note that the USA, Russia, China, and many other countries do not recognize this territory as being in any way Australian.
Despite the fact that the USA, Russia and China are not even in the southern hemisphere!
Re:Note to USA, Russia and China. (Score:3, Insightful)
Let me remind you how colonialism works. You get to keep whatever you claim and which nobody else can force you to relinquish. All pretence of civilization and legality when it comes to claims of "sovereignty" in cases like this are just that: pretences.
The emptiness of any "legal" claims to sovereignty over Antarctica can readily be seen by the fact that most countries ignore territorial claims and those that do have conflicting claims, yet it makes no difference. Nobody is going to insist on pressing their claims (or forcing others to relinquish their claims) because it's not worth getting into even a diplomatic spat over a "legal" absurdity.
The place where extending territorial claims is going to get nasty is on the other side of the globe -- in the Arctic. Between climate change and energy resources, we might see a shooting war there some time in the next generation.