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In the quiet little prairie town of Somerset the cats have the run of the sidewalks.

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Just 16 hours later:

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Wiki

This list of the largest optical reflecting telescopes with objective diameters of 3.0 metres (120 in) or greater is sorted by aperture, which is one limit on the light-gathering power and resolution of a reflecting telescope’s optical assembly.

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The Gran Telescopio Canarias (GranTeCan or GTC), also known as the Great Canary Telescope is a 10.4 m (410 in) reflecting telescope located at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on the island of La Palma, in the Canaries, Spain.

Construction of the telescope, sited on a volcanic peak 2,267 metres (7,438 ft) above sea level, took seven years and cost €130 million (£112 million). Its installation had been hampered by weather conditions and the logistical difficulties of transporting equipment to such a remote location. First light was achieved in 2007 and scientific observations began in 2009.

The GTC Project is a partnership formed by several institutions from Spain and Mexico, the University of Florida, the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC). Planning for the construction of the telescope, which started in 1987, involved more than 1,000 people from 100 companies.

As of 2015, it is the world’s largest single-aperture optical telescope. The distribution of the availability of time to use the telescope meets its financial structure: 90% Spain, 5% Mexico and 5% the University of Florida.

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The W. M. Keck Observatory is a two-telescope astronomical observatory at an elevation of 4,145 meters (13,600 ft) near the summit of Mauna Kea in the U.S. state of Hawaii. Both telescopes feature 10 m (33 ft) primary mirrors, currently among the largest astronomical telescopes in use. The combination of an excellent site, large optics and innovative instruments has created the two most scientifically productive telescopes on Earth.

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The Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) is a 10-metre class optical telescope designed mainly for spectroscopy. It consists of 91 hexagonal mirror segments each with a 1 metre inscribed diameter, resulting in a total hexagonal mirror of 11.1 m by 9.8 m. It is located close to the town of Sutherland in the semi-desert region of the Karoo, South Africa. It is a facility of the South African Astronomical Observatory, the national optical observatory of South Africa.

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The Hobby–Eberly Telescope (HET) is a 9.2-meter (30-foot) aperture telescope located at the McDonald Observatory. It is one of the largest optical telescopes in the world and combines a number of features that differentiate it from most telescope designs, resulting in greatly lowered construction costs. For instance, the primary mirror is constructed from 91 hexagonal segments, which is less expensive than manufacturing a single large primary. Furthermore, the telescope’s main mirror is fixed at a 55° angle and can rotate around its base. A target is tracked by moving the instruments at the focus of the telescope; this provides access to about 70–81% of the sky at its location and allows a single target to be tracked for up to two hours.

The Hobby–Eberly Telescope is operated by The University of Texas McDonald Observatory for a consortium of institutions which includes The University of Texas at Austin, Pennsylvania State University, Stanford University, Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich, and Georg August University of Gottingen.

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The Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) is an optical telescope for astronomy located on Mount Graham (10,700-foot (3,300 m) in the Pinaleno Mountains of southeastern Arizona, and is a part of the Mount Graham International Observatory. The LBT is currently one of the world’s most advanced optical telescopes; using two 8.4 m (27 ft) wide mirrors, with a 14.4 m center-center separation, it has the same light gathering ability as an 11.8 m (39 ft) wide single circular telescope and detail of a 22.8 m (75 ft) wide one. Either of its mirrors would be the second-largest optical telescope in continental North America, behind the Hobby–Eberly Telescope in West Texas; as of summer 2014, it would still be the largest monolithic, or non-segmented mirror, in an optical telescope. Optical performance of the telescope is excellent, and Strehl ratios of 60–90% in the infrared H band and 95% in the infrared M band have been achieved by the LBT.

The LBT was originally named the “Columbus Project”. It is a joint project of these members: the Italian astronomical community represented by the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica, the University of Arizona; University of Minnesota, University of Notre Dame, University of Virginia, the LBT Beteiligungsgesellschaft in Germany (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Landessternwarte in Heidelberg, Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP), Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Munich and Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn); The Ohio State University; Research Corporation in Tucson.

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Subaru Telescope is the 8.2 metre flagship telescope of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, located at the Mauna Kea Observatory on Hawaii. It is named after the open star cluster known in English as the Pleiades. It had the largest monolithic primary mirror in the world from its commission until 2005.

In 1984, the University of Tokyo formed an engineering working group to study the concept of a 7.5-metre telescope. In 1985, the astronomy committee of Japan’s science council gave top priority to the development of a “Japan National Large Telescope” (JNLT), and in 1986, the University of Tokyo signed an agreement with the University of Hawaii to build the telescope in Hawaii. In 1988, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan was formed through a reorganization of the University’s Tokyo Astronomical Observatory, to oversee the JNLT and other large national astronomy projects.

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The Very Large Telescope (VLT) is a telescope operated by the European Southern Observatory on Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. The VLT consists of four individual telescopes, each with a primary mirror 8.2 m across, which are generally used separately but can be used together to achieve very high angular resolution. The four separate optical telescopes are known as Antu, Kueyen, Melipal and Yepun, which are all words for astronomical objects in the Mapuche language. The telescopes form an array which is complemented by four movable Auxiliary Telescopes (ATs) of 1.8 m aperture.

The VLT operates at visible and infrared wavelengths. Each individual telescope can detect objects roughly four billion times fainter than can be detected with the naked eye, and when all the telescopes are combined, the facility can achieve an angular resolution of about 0.001 arc-second (This is equivalent to roughly 2 meters resolution at the distance of the Moon). In single telescope mode of operation angular resolution is about 0.05 arc-second.

The VLT is the most productive ground-based facility for astronomy, with only the Hubble Space Telescope generating more scientific papers among facilities operating at visible wavelengths. Among the pioneering observations carried out using the VLT are the first direct image of an exoplanet, the tracking of individual stars moving around the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way, and observations of the afterglow of the furthest known gamma-ray burst.

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The Gemini Observatory is an astronomical observatory consisting of two 8.19-metre (26.9 ft) telescopes, the Gemini North and Gemini South at different sites in Hawaii and Chile, respectively. Together, the twin Gemini telescopes provide almost complete coverage of both the northern and southern skies. They are currently among the largest and most advanced optical/infrared telescopes available to astronomers.

The Gemini telescopes were built and are operated by a consortium consisting of the United States, Canada, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, and Australia. This partnership is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA). The United Kingdom dropped out of the partnership at the end of 2012 and the Gemini Observatory has responded to this by significantly reducing its operating costs, so that no new partners are required beginning in 2013.

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9.

The Magellan Telescopes are a pair of 6.5 m (21.3 ft) diameter optical telescopes located at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. The two telescopes are named after the astronomer Walter Baade and the philanthropist Landon T. Clay.

First light for the telescopes was on September 15, 2000 for the Baade, and September 7, 2002 for the Clay.

A collaboration between Carnegie Institution for Science, University of Arizona, Harvard University, The University of Michigan and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology built and operate the twin telescopes.

It was named after the sixteenth-century Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan.

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The BTA-6 is a 6-metre (20 ft) aperture optical telescope at the Special Astrophysical Observatory located in the Zelenchuksky District on the north side of the Caucasus Mountains in southern Russia.

The BTA-6 achieved first light in late 1975, making it the largest telescope in the world until 1990, when it was surpassed by the partially constructed Keck 1. It pioneered the technique, now standard in large astronomical telescopes, of using an altazimuth mount with a computer-controlled derotator.

For a variety of reasons, BTA-6 was never able to operate near its theoretical limits. Early problems with poorly fabricated mirror glass were addressed in 1978, fixing the most serious issue. But due to its location down-wind of numerous large mountain peaks, astronomical seeing is rarely good. The telescope also suffers from serious thermal expansion problems due to the large thermal mass of the mirror, and the dome as a whole which is much larger than necessary. Upgrades have taken place throughout the system’s history and are ongoing to this day.

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National Geographic Magazine has just released its 30 best places to visit in 2016.  Unexpectedly and quite surprisingly, Winnipeg, Manitoba made the list.  The city on the flat prairie made the list along with Uruguay, Italian wine country, Botswana and many other very exotic locales.  National Geographic often recommends traveling to far-flung places way off the beaten path.  Winnipeg fits that description to a Tee. The nearest big city to Winnipeg, is Minneapolis, 500 miles south by southeast.  Winnipeg has no mountains or hills nearby.  There are beaches on the big lakes an hour north of the city.  But no one would consider Winnipeg a major must see place.  Or so we thought.

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National Geographic article:

Little Spark on the Prairie

Winnipeg, the capital of Manitoba, doesn’t usually find its way onto bucket lists. This multicultural, multilingual metropolis of 800,000, affectionately called the Peg by locals, blipped onto international radar screens in 2014 when the Canadian Museum for Human Rights opened here, and again this past summer when the FIFA Women’s World Cup passed through.

Planted midway between Canads’s Atlantic and Pacific coasts, Winnipeg is a whistle-stop on rail and road trips across Canada; polar bear and beluga whale enthusiasts know it as the starting point for their journey north to Churchill. But this unpretentious prairie city proves itself worthy of more than a glance from a train window.

Winnipeg’s 30-block Exchange District hums with music venues, galleries, restaurants, and boutiques. Winter brings notoriously bone-chilling temperatures—but that doesn’t stop Winnipeggers from skating the frozen Red River to applaud winners of the annual warming-hut competition, or heading to St. Boniface, Winnipeg’s French quarter, for the Festival du Voyageur, one of the city’s many festivals.

Travel Tips

When to Go: June through September for farmers markets and outdoor concerts and events like the Winnipeg Folk Festival; December to March for skating and tobogganing at Arctic Glacier Winter Park.

How to Get Around: Use the efficient Winnipeg Transit public bus system. Routes connect the airport to downtown (5:50 a.m. until 12:49 a.m.), where you can ride the free Downtown Spirit. This daily transit service has three routes and stops near restaurants, shopping districts, and other major downtown attractions. Use Winnipeg Transit’s helpful Navigo tool to plan any bus trip.

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Where to Stay: The 20-story Alt Hotel, which opened in April 2015, is arguably the coolest recent addition to downtown. Located near the Exchange District and across the street from the MTS Centre, the city’s major sports and entertainment venue, the 160-room Alt blends local flavor and an ultrahip, minimalist aesthetic. The lobby art installation features more than 2,000 images by Winnipeg photographer Bryan Scott, and rooms and common areas have lots of bare cement walls and natural light.

What to Eat or Drink: When Vancouver-based chef Wayne Martin relocated to Winnipeg in 2015 to open Capital Grill and Bar, he brought a West Coast-inspired menu. The result is a boon to landlocked locals craving fresh seafood dishes such as beer-battered halibut and chips, Dungeness crab cake, and steamed mussels and fries. The restaurant is open for lunch and dinner and closed on Mondays.

What to Buy: First Nations’ artisans make, display, and sell their original pieces—including custom mukluks, carved soapstone seals, and rawhide drums—atCree-ations, a family-run artist studio and store with two Winnipeg locations.

What to Read Before You Go: Several short stories and novels by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Carol Shields, including The Republic of Love (Open Road Media, 2013) and Larry’s Party (Penguin Books, 1998), were set in her adopted hometown of Winnipeg.

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Fun Fact: A time-honored wedding tradition in Winnipeg is the “Manitoba social,” a prenuptial fundraising party for the almost wed. Most socials follow the same formula: Hire a hall, sell tickets, and pack in as many people as possible to dance, drink, bid on prizes or buy raffle tickets, and raise a stash of cash for the happy couple.

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Two World Trade Center, the final piece in the massive puzzle that is the new World Trade Center site, has been redesigned with big plans for an amazing building.

Two World Trade Center, also known by its street address, 200 Greenwich Street, is an unfinished office building at the World Trade Center site in Manhattan, New York City. The tower is under construction and would be the second on the World Trade Center site. The first tower, the former South Tower of the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, was located across Greenwich Street. It was completed in 1971 and was destroyed in the September 11, 2001 attacks.

When completed, the tower will be located on the east side of Greenwich Street, across the street from the original location of the Twin Towers, which were destroyed during the September 11, 2001 attacks. The foundation work was completed in 2013, but construction is on hold.

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Original design

Two World Trade Center middle with diamond shaped top

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New design

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The new 81-story building, when completed, will have a total height of 1,340 feet (410 m). In comparison, the Empire State Building’s roof at the 102nd floor is 1,250 feet (380 m) tall, and its antenna is 1,454 feet (443 m), and the original 2 World Trade Center (referred to as the South Tower) was 1,362 feet (415 m).

On June 9, 2015, Wired magazine first reported that Two World Trade Center would be newly redesigned by Bjarke Ingels of Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), and be built by 2020. The bottom half of the new design will be leased out to 21st Century Fox and News Corp.

Bjarke Ingels Group began redesigning 2 World Trade Center in December 2014, upon the requests of the property’s developer Silverstein Properties and its possible future media tenants. The project’s redesign was warranted since financial firms had since migrated away from the Financial District, making leasing out the new buildings a struggle and further prolonging the World Trade Center’s redevelopment. Financial firms were the intended occupants for Foster and Partners’ 2 World Trade Center, and the original proposal’s sky lobby design was not attractive to media tenants, who have been the leading tenants of the new WTC towers and are now expected to occupy BIG’s redesigned building.

The latest design features a cantilevering structure viewed from a northern perspective, but a terraced structure from an eastern perspective. From the south and west, the building’s profile is vertically straight, but appears to be leaning slightly towards One World Trade Center because of the cantilevering design. In an interview, Bjarke Ingels described the concept of the redesign as such: “Two World Trade is almost like a vertical village of bespoke buildings within the building, that also can be seen as a single tower. It actually has an inclination towards One World Trade Center, so the two towers — even though they’re not twinning — by having a mutual relationship, the space between them is parallel, although at an incline.” The tower has also been described to integrate Tribeca with the Financial District, as the design’s cantilevers and terraces resemble the modern architecture known of the neighborhood.

The first three floors of the 2,800,000 square feet (260,000 m²) office building, including the ground level, will feature about 100,000 square feet (9,300 m²) of retail space. The tower will be the second–tallest skyscraper on the World Trade Center site following One World Trade Center.

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Terraces on the steps will have gardens

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In 2013, Citigroup had shortlisted the tower as one of three potential locations for its headquarters for when its lease on 399 Park Avenue expires in 2017, however the company eventually chose nearby 388 Greenwich Street, a building which it already had under lease.

Bloomberg Business reported on June 2, 2015, that News Corporation and 21st Century Fox, both owned by Rupert Murdoch, had signed a non-binding agreement with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to create a joint headquarters at Two World Trade Center. Silverstein said “A decision by 21st Century Fox and News Corp. to move to the new World Trade Center would cap a seismic shift that has taken place in Lower Manhattan over the past decade. This isn’t your grandfather’s Wall Street.” On April 24, 2015, Dow Jones Business News reported that avant-garde Danish architect Bjarke Ingels would be brought in to replace Norman Foster as lead designer for Tower 2 if the Murdoch companies do move to the site; a redesign was deemed necessary given the different requirements for TV studios as opposed to financial companies, the assumed major tenants for the Foster design. His design would be kept at the same height as Foster’s. However, it is unclear how the redesign would conflict with the below-grade work already completed, which conformed to the original building design. However, on the World Trade Center website, if one was to go to the leasing area in Tower 2, the 3rd floor plan shows the look-alike already built foundation, which means it could work with the already built foundation, as Bjarke Ingels said that the new 2 WTC is designed to fit on Lord Norman Foster’s tower core and foundation.

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Built on a Strong Foundation

The needs and requirements of the tenants are concentrated into seven separate building volumes, each tailored to their unique activities. The volumes are stacked on top of each other from the largest to the smallest, creating unity out of diversity.

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It’s here, the winter monster that is. It took until November 19th this year, but the damn thing arrived. People in Manitoba will have to take it in stride and bear it, nothing we can do.

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Today, downtown Winnipeg.

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Bloomberg

Aerion, the supersonic-jet maker backed by Texas billionaire Robert Bass, plans to choose a manufacturing site during the first half of next year as it targets delivering the first faster-than-sound business aircraft in 2023.

The timeline unveiled Monday fleshes out how Aerion and partner Airbus Group SE intend to build a civilian plane capable of trans-sonic travel, a niche left vacant since the retirement of the Concorde in 2003. The team has made preliminary designs for a carbon-fiber wing structure, fuselage, landing gear and a fuel system, among other components.

“We see clear and achievable technical solutions to the design of a supersonic jet, and a realistic road map for helping Aerion proceed toward construction and flight,” Airbus Senior Vice President Ken McKenzie said in a statement.

Airbus will provide major components and Aerion will do the final assembly, the companies said in the statement released at the National Business Aviation Association trade show in Las Vegas. For the production site, Aerion needs a 100-acre (40-hectare) area near a U.S. airport with a runway at least 9,000 feet (2,700 meters) long, The plan is to break ground on the factory in 2018.

Aerion is targeting the first flight of the AS2 for 2021. The project began in 2002 and was put on hold by the 2008-09 financial crisis.

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The collaboration with Airbus announced last year increases Aerion’s chances of building a private jet that can break the sound barrier. The AS2 is intended to fly efficiently at lower speeds over land because of flight restrictions related to sonic booms. Over oceans, the aircraft can accelerate to Mach 1.5, which is 1.5 times the speed of sound. At sea level, sound travels at about 750 miles (1,200 kilometers) per hour.

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While military jets have had supersonic capabilities for decades, the economics are daunting for civilian operations. High ticket prices helped do in the Concorde after 27 years of service, which slurped twice as much fuel as a Boeing Co. jumbo jet while carrying only one-fourth as many passengers.

In the years since Air France and British Airways parked their Concordes, would-be supersonic jet developers have turned to business aircraft in hopes of putting newer technology in a smaller airframe to attract wealthy buyers and globe-trotting chief executive officers.

Aerion has begun to choose suppliers and plans to pick an engine maker during the first half of next year, CEO Doug Nichols said in the statement. The cabin will be developed by Inairvation, a venture between Lufthansa Technik AG and F. List GmbH.

“We will proceed with an engine that allows us to meet our performance goals with the minimum changes required,” Nichols said. “Solutions are in sight with today’s engine technology.”

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WiredUK

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“Remember the terrorists that are calling themselves Islamic State, Isis, are not Muslims. Isis, we will hunt you, take down your sites, accounts, emails, and expose you from now on. No safe place for you online,” states the video.

Anonymous’ latest actions come after it ” declared war” on Isis-related websites and social media networks following the Charlie Hebdo shooting massacre in January 2015.

Along with this video stating the continuation of “Operation Isis”, Anonymous uploaded a Pastebin link with a list of Facebook profiles associated with the group, as well as ISIS-affiliated Twitter accounts.

Countering Isis’ exclusive ideology, Anonymous state in the video that “we come from all countries, races, religions and ethnicities… we are Muslims, Christians, Jews, we are hackers, crackers, phishers, agents, spies, or just the guy from next door”.

Isis has relied heavily on social media networks to disseminate propaganda, and has turned to online platforms in a bid to raise money. Its digital strategy has also been deployed to attract and radicalise new recruits both in the UK and abroad.

The recent attack by Anonymous temporarily sets back the extremist groups propaganda drive and recruitment campaign through social media.

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