TMT?

Every once in awhile, we go looking for news about the Thirty-Meter Telescope project on Hawaii in which UC is involved. The last yours truly could find out about it indicated that the governor of Hawaii, hoping to overcome opposition that stalled the project, indicated last November that he would support building it on the sites where past telescopes which have been decommissioned and removed once were. But that approach, too, provoked opposition.

There is an alternative plan to move the project from Hawaii, where nothing happens, to the Canary Islands (Spain). Spain has offered to put some funding into it. Local environment groups there, however, have complained.

Given federal government cuts for such research, it isn't clear that even if an unopposed location were found, there would be sufficient money to build the TMT. The UC Regents have not paid much attention to TMT for a long time, although it sometimes comes up in public comments. It is not on their agenda for their meetings this week.

See: https://www.civilbeat.org/2025/11/thirty-meter-telescope-planners-consider-other-sites-on-mauna-kea/; https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/bobs-blog-thirty-meter-telescope-9.6996441; https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2025/12/16/spotlight-now-gov-green-hawaiis-economy-immigration-enforcement/.