Tootfinder

MIRAC-5 on the MMT with MAPS: annular groove phase mask N-band coronagraphic upgrade
Alyssa L. Miller, Jarron Leisenring, Michael Meyer, Gilles Orban De Xivry, Olivier Absil, Rory Bowens, Christian Delacroix, Olivier Durney, Pontus Forsberg, Bill Hoffmann, Mikael Karlsson, John D. Monnier, Manny Montoya, Katie Morzinski, Eric Pantin, Samuel Ronayette, Taylor L. Tobin, Grant West

MIRAC-5 on the MMT with MAPS: annular groove phase mask N-band coronagraphic upgrade
We describe the coronagraphic upgrade underway for the Mid-Infrared Array Camera-5 (MIRAC-5) to be used with the 6.5-m MMT telescope utilizing the new MMT Adaptive optics exoPlanet characterization System (MAPS). Mid-IR ground-based coronagraphic adaptive-optics-assisted imaging can be a powerful tool for characterizing exoplanet atmospheres and studying protoplanets in formation within circumstellar disks around young stars. In addition to enabling ground-based observations of bright targets i…

In Ursula K. Le Guin's "A Man of the People" (part of "Four Ways to Forgiveness") there's a scene where the Hainish protagonist begins studying history. It's excellent in many respects, but what stood out the most to me was the softly incomprehensible idea of a people with multiple millions of years of recorded history. As one's mind starts to try to trace out the implications of that, it dawns on you that you can't actually comprehend the concept. Like, you read the sentence & understood all the words, and at first you were able to assemble them into what seemed like a conceptual understanding, but as you started to try to fill out that understating, it began to slip away, until you realized you didn't in fact have the mental capacity to build a full understanding and would have you paper things over with a shallow placeholder instead.
I absolutely love that feeling, as one of the ways in which reading science fiction can stretch the brain, and I connected it to a similar moment in Tsutomu Nihei's BLAME, where the android protagonists need to ride an elevator through the civilization/galaxy-spanning megastructure, and turn themselves off for *millions of years* to wait out the ride.
I'm not sure why exactly these scenes feel more beautifully incomprehensible than your run-of-the-mill "then they traveled at lightspeed for a millennia, leaving all their family behind" scene, other than perhaps the authors approach them without trying to use much metaphor to make them more comprehensible (or they use metaphor to emphasize their incomprehensibility).
Do you have a favorite mind=expanded scene of this nature?
#AmReading

This is the last straw! Working with Israel to commit genocide we can forgive but asking us to pay more for their services… now that’s unconscionable. https://mastodon.online/@parismarx/114914379016704186

Look at how Trump’s fascist government treats a journalist asking questions about israel’s Hannibal Directive and its illegal nuclear weapons.
Oh, sorry, I meant Biden’s.
Lesser of two evils and all that, I guess.
https://www.newsweek.com/s…

Video: Journalist Sam Husseini Forcibly Removed From Blinken's Last News Conference
Sam Husseini was grabbed by security members and escorted out of the room.

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on BBCRadio3's #RoundMidnight
FloFliz & Raelle:
🎵 Peace of Mind
#FloFliz #Raelle
https://open.spotify.com/track/48feuUR56g9gBBFKjPuWBj