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This would have been a P.R. challenge in the best of times, but these are not the best of times for telescopes on Hawaii mountain summits.
Hilton Lewis, director of the W.M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, expressed his regret for a slow response in investigating a leak of oil inside the telescope building. Six areas of slow seepage were identified.
Keep in mind: The impact of the installations on the environment has been a continuing complaint from opponents of the Thirty Meter Telescope project proposed for the summit. Expect to hear a clamor from those quarters, and soon.
Life on Mars? It gets curiouser and curiouser
The aptly named Curiosity has done it again. That’s the nifty land rover sent to Mars in 2012, and has since beamed back an array of photos and info about the Red Planet. The new news, released Thursday by NASA, is that the evidence is getting clearer that potential building blocks of life have been found in an ancient Martian lakebed.
The organic molecules preserved in 3.5 billion-year-old bedrock suggest conditions that may have been conducive to life, opening the possibility that microorganisms once populated Mars — and still might. Let’s hope Curiosity, which has its own drill and onboard labs, keeps going.
