Astrophysics Quotes

Working on the summit of Mauna Kea was comparable to working on the hospital pulmonary ward with sick people sucking on oxygen cylinders.

Oxygen deprivation and supplemental oxygen are both bio-hazards for Mauna Kea workers

This fits in with what I saw in staff in astronomical facilities and was reporting to the management team: 10-14% Oxygen: Emotional upset, abnormal fatigue, disturbed respiration.

Very high altitude astronomy only works by ignoring established biological science

When discharging industrial gas into the indoor environment in high altitude astronomy, we never wore breathing respirators that fed us oxygenated air at above the legally required 19.5% oxygen levels.

When I worked in astronomy, I routinely observed young college and university students working with liquid nitrogen and breathing nitrogen gas as they discharged it into the indoor environment at high altitude.

Astronomy staff that routinely discharged industrial gas into the indoor environment at high altitudes did not wear oxygen deficiency monitors or protective breathing respirators.

Industrial liquid gas containers were left open and venting gas into the indoor environment in high altitude astronomy. On reflection, I realized that I routinely observed mental and physical effects that match those of a low oxygen environment in staff that I supervised.

Pluto is dead, I know as I observed the Terminator that was sent to kill it

I have been through the OSHA system twice and I can confirm that I did not have the right to a safe workplace or whistle-blower protection on either occasion.

In high altitude astronomical facilities we routinely discharged large amounts of nitrogen gas into closed spaces. We were never informed by the astronomy management team about the abnormally low oxygen environments that the use of liquid nitrogen creates, how long term exposure to it manifests itself in human health and the resulting abnormal mental behaviors.

The toxicity of medical and industrial gas to the human depends on where it is used. A gas that is regarded as safe in a well ventilated environment at sea level may be a toxic gas in an indoor environment at high altitude.

My memories of my time in high altitude astronomy indicate that there were no oxygen concentration monitors or alarms in the areas that liquid nitrogen was in use at the high altitude astronomical facilities where I had worked.

Snow cleaning of the world's largest telescope mirrors was an impressive sight. The optics technicians would climb into a huge telescopic boom lift and spray immense clouds of cold carbon dioxide snow and gas onto the ten meter diameter mirrors high above the floor indoors. It would cause some of the accumulated dirt to magically fall off, leaving it less dirty.

At the W.M. Keck Observatory on the very high altitude summit of Mauna Kea, there was no routine monitoring of mental functioning, blood oxygen levels, blood pressure or heart rate of workers.

The gravitational waves of the first detection were generated by a collision of black holes in a galaxy 1.3 billion light-years away, and at a time when Earth was teeming with simple, single-celled organisms. While the ripple moved through space in all directions, Earth would, after another 800 million years, evolve complex life, including flowers and dinosaurs and flying creatures, as well as a branch of vertebrates called mammals. Among the mammals, a sub-branch would evolve frontal lobes and complex thought to accompany them. We call them primates. A single branch of these primates would develop a genetic mutation that allowed speech, and that branch—Homo Sapiens—would invent agriculture and civilization and philosophy and art and science. All in the last ten thousand years. Ultimately, one of its twentieth-century scientists would invent relativity out of his head, and predict the existence of gravitational waves. A century later, technology capable of seeing these waves would finally catch up with the prediction, just days before that gravity wave, which had been traveling for 1.3 billion years, washed over Earth and was detected.Yes, Einstein was a badass.

Neil deGrasse Tyson