This is a clash between religion and science, but it is not just that. Over the past year, this fight spun out into a lawsuit that’s now before the Hawaii Supreme Court. Astronomers want to move forward with plans to build their $1 billion observatory, known as the Thirty Meter Telescope, or TMT, near the mountain’s summit, while local protesters are rallying against the project in an attempt to reclaim a unique and sacred place for the Hawaiian people. ![]() The placement of these telescopes-and a plan to build a new, mega-telescope-is the source of enormous tension in Hawaii, where Mauna Kea is at the center of an intense cultural and political debate. And near the summit of Mauna Kea, there is a cluster of enormous telescopes, including some of the most powerful on the planet. On its slopes, there are some 100 archaeological sites, most of them heiau, or shrines. The volcano remains sacred today, but not only to Hawaiians. Mauna Kea is the son of Wākea, the sky father, and of Papahānaumoku, the Earth mother. In the Kumulipo, the ancient chant that tells the story of how the Hawaiian Islands and the Hawaiian people came to be, the volcano is considered kino lau, the physical form of the gods. To subsequent generations of Native Hawaiians, Mauna Kea was and had always been a temple. that ocean-faring voyagers crossed the Pacific in double-hulled canoes to make their home in the Hawaiian Islands. And it wasn’t until sometime between 300 A.D. But Mauna Kea is just a baby by geologic standards, among the newest volcanoes on a 40-million-year-old archipelago’s youngest island.Īt the time when Mauna Kea formed, the global population of human ancestors numbered in the tens of thousands. Measuring from its base on the ocean bed, it is the tallest mountain on Earth. Mauna Kea, on the Big Island of Hawaii, is a tremendous shield volcano, the second largest in our solar system. ![]() One million years ago, great ribbons of lava poured out of the sea floor, piled on top of one another, and eventually grew into the mountain that is now called Mauna Kea. This story begins with an earth-cracking volcanic eruption.
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