Tag: exploration

Antarctica in 650?

A new paper combines literature and oral histories, and concludes that Māori, the indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand, were likely the first people to explore Antarctica’s surrounding waters, and possibly the continent in the distance. They write that Māori and Polynesian journeys to the deep south have been occurring for a long time, perhaps as far back as 650, and are recorded in a variety of oral traditions.

2023-06-24: This claim is false and ideologically motivated.

“These stories, presented without nuance, qualification or critique, make extraordinary claims without offering commensurable evidence”. The Hui Te Rangiora story was a Rarotongan tradition translated by ethnologist Stephenson Percy Smith​ near the end of the 19th century and debunked by Te Rangi Hīroa​ (Sir Peter Buck​) who wrote that “so much post-European information has been included in the native text” he could no longer accept the traditions as accurate and ancient.

This means O’Regan, Tau and the others were in the position of repeating work Te Rangi Hīroa did 100 years ago.

In serious historical circles, relying on Smith is problematic.

“These scholars haven’t learned anything over the past 50 years”.

NYC Gems

This is a pretty great and comprehensive list of what makes the city awesome.

Following up our master list of 160 secrets of New York City, we bring to you 160 hidden gems of New York City! Every one of these hidden gems are places for you to discover. Some show the uniqueness and quaintness of New York City’s architecture, others reveal the infrastructure that supports New York or the history hidden in plain sight. Some are simply off-the-beaten path. All, we believe, are hidden gems in their own right. The majority are publicly accessible although some only on limited occasions. Some come from our book about the secrets of Brooklyn, but this list covers all 5 boroughs of the city. Many others come from the archives of Untapped New York and some come from exciting user-generated submissions on our Facebook page. So without further ado, here are the hidden gems of New York City!

Cave King

As far as anyone seems to know, he’s the largest private cave owner in the United States. Ackerman displayed an almost religious devotion to these fragile places and a certain sadness that far too few people seemed to share it, especially now that he’s getting old and the future of his domain is looking murky. His children have embarked on above-ground careers, with little interest in committing to the security, maintenance, and management of his below-ground assets. With no clear heir, and no one with the combined resources and dedication to preside over 64km of caves, Ackerman has considered putting the land in a trust, leaving it to his caving club, or even attempting to work something out with his longtime enemies at the DNR as a last-ditch option.

Solar shield

A shield to get within 10000km of the Sun

A NASA NIAC study is developing the technology to get within 0.5 solar radii of the sun. The goal is to scatter 99.9% of the solar radiation. A solar radius is 700K kilometers. They want to get to 0 to 10K kilometers away from the surface of the sun.

In 2018 the Parker Solar Probe launched, planning to approach the Sun to within 8.5 solar radii of its surface. This is 7x closer than any previous mission, allowing first-time particle, radiation, and magnetic field measurements of the Sun’s corona.

20x Laser Propulsion

A kilometer-scale, multi-100-megawatt phased-array laser to beam power to a vehicle that converts it to electrical power for a multi-megawatt electric propulsion system that produces a specific impulse of 58K s. This will enable velocities of 100 to 200 km/s, and would enable a mission to the solar gravity lens location of 550 AU in less than 15 years. This will be 9 to 18x faster than the Dawn Mission (11.5 km/s).

Mapping the Ocean Floor

One of the most amazing things to find unexpectedly is often a wreck. There are tons of those around, we don’t know where they are, and we often find them unexpectedly. We’ve found seamounts—4000-meter-high seamounts that we find when we think nothing is there, and these have impacts on biodiversity and circulation. We find all kinds of interesting structures on the seafloor that we just don’t understand yet. And again we find it looking at it now through a new lens of high resolution.

Europa mission

NASA’s Europa Clipper mission will conduct detailed reconnaissance of Jupiter’s moon Europa to see whether the icy moon could harbor conditions suitable for life. The mission will carry a highly capable, radiation-tolerant spacecraft that will perform repeated close flybys of the icy moon from a long, looping orbit around Jupiter. The payload of selected science instruments includes cameras and spectrometers to produce high-resolution images of Europa’s surface and determine its composition. An ice penetrating radar will determine the thickness of the moon’s icy shell and search for subsurface lakes similar to those beneath Antarctica. The mission also will carry a magnetometer to measure strength and direction of the moon’s magnetic field, which will allow scientists to determine the depth and salinity of its ocean.