Funding Cut For Arecibo Observatory 161
satorchi writes "In a recent
Senior Review
conducted by the
National Science Foundation,
a panel of experts recommended the reduction of funding to
Arecibo Observatory, the world's largest radio telescope. Unless other sources of funding are found, Arecibo faces severe cuts in its program, with the prospect of closure around the year 2011.
Development of the global project called the
Square Kilometer Array (SKA) is cited as a reason to decommission Arecibo, but with the SKA coming online around the year 2020, closure of Arecibo in 2011 is some ten years premature. Until SKA is up and running, Arecibo remains the world's most sensitive radio telescope."
Yay! (Score:2)
-b.
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So just cut all federal funding to the universities. It might give us another month over there... (Oh wait, we are already cutting academic funding except for security-related research).
-b.
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Not to mention that more small firms add to the wealth of Americans themselves and bolster the middle class. It's one thing to be an employee. It's quite another to have your own company and hav
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Though I haven't been late on any payments since college
Tom
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I know. It's just that the attitude towards large corps translates into the same attitude towards small "mom-and-pop" businesses. Which really sucks for the owners of those busines
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What I don'
Iraq is where? (Score:1)
Iraq is in western Asia.
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Was making a 1984/Orwell joke...
-b.
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INCONCEIVABLE (Score:2)
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I thought I scrubbed it all off! I'll be more careful next time.
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??? No, I'm saying that with the amount of money we spend annually on Iraq, certain other government projects have to get the axe. There's limited money to go around and we're already up to our nipples in debt. Pretty soon, we'll be in up to our noses and unable to breathe, so something's got to give, I guess.
And no need to resort to ad-hominem attacks. We're not in grade school here...
-b.
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Actually, no. You're working from the ridiculous premise that the federal budget has some sort of "balance" to it, that a greater expense in one area must necessarily be countered by an equal cut elsewher
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Money has to be worth something - i.e. it has to be backed up by assets, tangible objects that it can be traded for, or services. If you print more money, money will just experience a commensurate reduction in value. Weimar Germany tried that and people ended up bringing baskets of money to the store to buy a loaf of bread.
-b.
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Uh, but the NSF as a whole might be allotted less money this year than in, say, 2000, as a result of other Federal costs.
-b.
SETI@HOME (Score:3, Insightful)
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If Google AdSense ran inside the SETI screensaver, what would it show? I ran a little test in Gmail just now with relevant text from SETI, and returned:
Sponsored Links
Moon Sand $29.95
Molds like dough. Use over & over again. Ships next day. [redacted]
Space Ringtone
Send this complimentary ringtone to your phone right now! [redacted]
Pluto Astronomy T-Shirts
Planetary science & geology humor cool t-shirts & gifts. Fast ship. [redacted]
Eh, not so bad. BG
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SETI@home was not started by, nor was it designed by SETI. A few volunteers conceived of and technically produced it. If you're that worried, a similar arrangement could certainly be made.
In the early days up here in Seattle, pitches were made to major corporations. Paramount Pictures donated US$50,000. Sun Microsystems donated server hardware, and they are one of several commercial entities advertised for on the sponsors page of the SETI site still today.
That's just SETI. As for the non-profit holiness o
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Wouldn't it be a slap in the face of the people volunteering their computer resources, to make them look at ads too?
No, it wouldn't, if looking at ads were also voluntary.
For my part, screen saving bits run when I'm not looking or even when I'm not there. I would happily volunteer that space at those times for relevant, inconspicuous text ads with SETI, Arecibo itself, or related others as a beneficiaries. If it meant closing the screen saver instead of just jiggling a mouse, or instead a three second p
cost to operate arecibo (Score:1)
according to the Senior Review report.
Re:SETI@HOME YAY! (Score:2)
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Actually, that is possible. I was at the SKA meeting this past Friday and listened to the talk by the SETI people. They would be able to do their thing during normal science operations by the SKA.
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The problem with depending on small donations, I would imagine, is that long-range planning for such a large facility requires some kind of commitment that the source of funding will be stable year after year. In other words, there must be institutional support for the lion's share of the budget.
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Error in link (Score:1)
Jody Foster will be PISSED... (Score:2)
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The history of Astronomy/Astrophysics reviews. (Score:2)
to set priorities for funding, sometimes making hard decisions between projects This self discipline helps it greatly in government funding when funding decisions have to be made between project and facilities; otherwise projects would get "peanut buttered" to death, with too little money spread over too many projects.
If the scientists won't give guidance to the paper pushers, then they do the politically expedient decisions; the har
World's most sensitive radio telescope ? (Score:2)
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With interferometry, you can get virtual baselenghts the size of the earth.
But when you want to get a weak signal, the 300m dish has an order of mangnitude more collection area than the closed 2nds.
World's most sensitive (Score:3, Funny)
Doing the right thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod parent up! (Score:2)
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The NSF may be making good, ballsy decisions with what they have. People are saying that they should have more. At least I am, and a lot of other posts, too.
Kind Regards
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I was just noting that a lot of people are not, in fact, upset at the NSF. Looking at the sunset date of 2011 is really quite telling. It will create a "save the dish" campaign well after we are (hopefully) out of Iraq and with a new administration.
I get it.
Kind Regards
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I work as an engineer at a non-NSF-funded university radio observatory and we have the hardest time getting funding for even paper clips. We took over an old ex-NSF telescope a few years ago and have been keeping it running on a tiny budget.
It's rather difficult to provide students with telescope time if the only telescopes available are those big $billion arrays that the NSF has put all its funding into. I'm not sure where the balance should be, but some
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That's interesting stuff... thanks for that.
I must disagree... (Score:3, Informative)
The short term cause is the Director of the National Radio Astronomy Observatories (NRAO) convincing a senator to earmark a significant portion of the NSF astronomy funding for NRAO. Since most of that mone
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Well, given that earmarks are the only way an organization funded by NSF is going to get funds outside of the normal NSF review process, to "lobby for funds" is the same as to "ask for earmarks." That lobbying was a way to bypass the way NSF normally allocates their funds, which is in theory based upon scientific merit. NSF is pr
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-b.
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Nice summary.
Scott
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Well, judging by this part of the intro, they'll be deeply hurt and offended:
Arecibo remains the world's most sensitive radio telescope.
(Thanks [slashdot.org])
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That is very true -- if your source happens to be in the ~30% of the sky that Arecibo can observe....
Scott
Argus, anyone? (Score:2)
The group is NAAPO [naapo.org] and it includes Dr. Bob Dixon as well as Jerry Ehman -- both of Big Ear Fame -- do have somewhat active roles within the organization. Their Argus project is very similar in the SKA, with the exception is that it's already running, and you can see the live data on the web and do your 'own observin
Google maps link (Score:2)
This thread wouldn't be complete without a Google Maps link.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&z=17&ll=18.3444,-6 6.7527&spn=0.0054,0.0084&t=k [google.com]
Apparently they added hi-resolution pictures of it in the past few months.
Teaching Ourselves a Lesson (Score:2)
We're building the Cuban economy while shafting the Puerto Rican economy. But oh, the things we'll learn - about the sadists who run the US.
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See, this is what happens when you're not a state: nobody in Congress to ensure that pork keeps coming your way.
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I understand that Anonymous Cowards who hate facts and love torture are Bush's natural constituency. But after so many years, it's you who should be getting old, old enough to know better not to slime up Slashdot with your infantile tirades.
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This ignorant spewing of negative fears and hate mongering is really getting old. Please go away or grow up.
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Regards
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BTW, it's up to you whether you respond to the facts about Bush's torture preference to science with hate, or with positive action. But I guess if you're going to react to messengers like me with the kind of hatred you have, you have already made your choice.
Your choice for torture. The worst kind of ignorant, negative fear and hate mongering.
LOFAR (Score:2)
NSF Rules (Score:1)
The NSF does a very thorough review of grant proposals based on a set of requirements. The grant writer has to show how they will meet those requirements for the proper use and accounting of funds. Some of the requirements *may* include the following:
* NSF projects must include education outreach and community involvement. For example taking on internships and hosting talks at local schools. * The project must show ample leader
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It isn't as if Aericibo will be ripped down. (Score:2)
Now, isn't it time we started
Not a problem.. we no longer need it (Score:2)
Land observatory occupies (Score:1)
Jodie Foster called (Score:2)
The Actual Results (Score:2)
OPTICAL
Reduce/cut off funding for Gemini Observatory
commence construction of Giant Segmented Mirror telescope (~30m telescope) and Large Survey Telescope
RADIO
Reduce funding for or close completely Arecibo observatory and the VLBA
Reduce administrative costs at NRAO and the Green Bank Telescope
Start funding construction of Square Kilometer
The Bob Zemeckis Strategy (Score:2)
Lesson: When soliciting funds for SETI projects from an eccentric billionaire, quote Marty McFly at the last minute.
I know how to fix this. (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't buy 1 F-22 Raptor.
Seriously. Shave one off of the list of aircraft to buy. From what I'm seeing, the per-unit cost of those aircraft is in excess of $100M. Bam, funding for the next five years (or more) is done. I'm doubting we'll really notice the difference, militarily.
Or here's another idea: We could cut some of the rediculous spending elsewhere. Most of it is military, yeah, but I'm sure if we look hard enough, there are more bridges to nowhere that can be cut instead.
FFS, stop cutting science spending. Spending money on research is almost always a good idea, even if it doesn't pay off immediately. It's not that difficult, really. Learning = good. Duh.
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1. Learn about astronomy, history of science, physics, cosmology, what fiction is, etc.
2. Post about them on slashdot.
Can you spot which two steps you got reversed?
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Seriously, if your human condition is the shine on the BMW in your three car garage, you are a pathetic human being and need to get fucked. RF communication is used internally on our "advanced" civilization. Only a complete fucking idiot-tool would think we want to do some sort of two way chat. ET: "...." E-man: "hi how r u, A/S/L?" ET: "yo
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I just think building really huge radios isn't super useful, at least not anymore.
And that if you really want to sit in the desert or in a rain forrest looking at the sky, you should do it with your own damn money.
I'm really not impressed with the idea of finding ET. Specifically because I ASSUME there *is* ET. But until we can actually do something useful with that info (e.g. faster than light comm) it's all just "nice to think about."
Try this experiment. Communicate wi
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Just to get the proportions right; how much of USA's budget is spent on military funding vs NASA?
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The military is constitutionally supposed to be part of the federal budget. The military is one of the few reasons we bother to have a federal government at all, because you just can't "correctly" implement a military without it. The military needs a federal government, and that's where it should be funded from.
(If the military were used for what it was intended for (protecting America's security), instead o
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I'd expect an F-22 to have a marginal cost of maybe $50M.
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Astrophysics and wars (Score:2)
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The likelyhood that simple RF is how advanced cultures communicate is ludicrous. I don't want to get all sci-fi on this thread, but chances are something like subspace (e.g. faster than light) communication is required to really be effective. Otherwise you'll have years and years to wait for a reply from anything, especially given the nearest possibly populated planets are what, hundreds of light years away?
Chances are, FTL is impossible. Fact is *we* do communicate with radio
They use it to take pseudo
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This is worse than fighting random wars? I don't hear about this telescope killing a few dozen Americans per week.
On the one hand we can learn to grow better crops, treat diesease and advance physics, on the other we can build really large [brute force] radio telescopy to take better pictures of things that were going on, supposedly, billions o
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Please. We must support the troops. If you don't stand with them, you stand against them [npr.org].
The $14M spent on Arecibo could be spent to support the troops in Iraq [72.14.209.104]. Sure, some of that spending doesn't actually go over to Iraq, but that ignores the way things get done [google.com] in our system. Without proper motivation, our national leadership is unable to focus [google.com] on getting the job done.
It is cut and runners [duckworthforcongress.com]
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You have no idea what you are talking about... (Score:2)
No offense, but you have no idea what you are talking about. We cannot generalize based on a set of ONE. We have no idea at all if it is likely OR unlikely that aliens would use radio, just like we have no idea if there are any aliens or not and what they are like.
You are not near as bad, however, as the guy who knew so much (based on a sample of one) that he was able to generalize that the only viable life form for any a
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There are a lot of interesting stuff to be done in cosmology. By no means I am an expert, but wouldn't you want to know the nature of the Universe, how it was created etc? Things like detecting the 21 centimeter radiation [wikipedia.org] is crucial in understanding the early universe [wikipedia.org]. Things like the Flatness problem [wikipedia.org] and the curvature of the universe are decided through measuring the Plank curve of the b
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Why do you assume that other intelligent lifeforms operate on our timescale?
We are on a short times
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If it were up to me, I'd spend the money on Strong AI first and then let it search for the aliens once the technological singularity comes about.
Car talk? (Score:2)
Female hearing noises from Vega. I think I heard that on "Car Talk" last Saturday.
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The US operates an even larger radar near Lima, Peru (the Jicamarca Radar Observatory). However, at 50 MHz, and looking up through the equatorial ionosphere
Both JRO and AO have their uses. *neither* is replacable by *any* instruments on the planet