Hello Friend,

      As ground broke recently on the  (TMT) Thirty Metre Telescope project recently, in Mauna Kea, Hawaii
there have been several groups, primarily religious and native, protesting the land as being sacred
and that this instrument should not be built for those reasons.

   Canada was involved from the early stages as a contributor to the consortium of several countries involved.
  and the Harper government  recently announced last Spring  that funds towards this project would be released,
  which is all well and good.

That amount is to the tune of $243 million dollars, which represents about 20% of the total budget to this
instrument.

     The telescope when completed in 2018 will take us to the outer limits of the universe.

Plus further research on dark matter and dark energy will be continued. 

This telescope will be  about three times the size of existing telescopes.

         And what has religion and superstition done for us in the past and present?

Nothing but hold us back from  scientific  advancement for the most part.

Sad but true.

Dr. Ray Carlberg -  University of Toronto ,Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
has been involved with this project from the very beginning.

   You can read more about it here:

http://lot.astro.utoronto.ca/sci_general_new_1.html

Clear Skies,

Ray Khan