{"id":289211,"date":"2017-01-09T03:16:13","date_gmt":"2017-01-09T02:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/nasa-is-not-just-a-propaganda-apparatus\/"},"modified":"2017-01-09T17:49:46","modified_gmt":"2017-01-09T16:49:46","slug":"nasa-is-not-just-a-propaganda-apparatus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/nasa-is-not-just-a-propaganda-apparatus\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA Is Not Just a Propaganda Apparatus"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Why is it that all our heroes inevitably try to kill us? From Winston Churchill<\/a> to Albert Einstein<\/a>, the people we laud the most were, at one point, responsible for great harm done, and not always by their own intention. \u201cMost of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions,\u201d said T.S. Eliot.<\/div>\n
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Earlier this month, The New York Times Magazine<\/em> ran a profile piece<\/a> on someone who, I predict, will someday become another savior-cum-killer. Sara Seager is a brilliant astrophysicist at M.I.T. who is dedicated to discovering more earthlike planets in the universe. Her life\u2019s work has been committed to finding habitable planets light-years away from our own lowly blue home in the Milky Way.<\/p>\n

One of Seager\u2019s many goals is to get in contact with extraterrestrial life. She\u2019s a leading advocate for a project called \u201cstarshade,\u201d a sunflower-shaped, shield-like device that is designed to block out the sun\u2019s light so that other telescopes can better spot life-sustaining planets like our own. A more aesthetically pleasing version of Mr. Burns\u2019 contraption<\/a>, the starshade will not only blacken the sun for us to see deeper in the universe but also make the earth more visible for anyone looking in.<\/p>\n

The unasked but pertinent question here is: More visible to whom? Seager seems to be operating under the assumption that any contact with aliens is a good thing. Her optimism is untempered with caution. Has she not seen Independence Day<\/em>, Mars Attacks!<\/em>, or The Day the Earth Stood Still<\/em>? If we can\u2019t count on foreigners<\/a> on our own terrestrial rock to be peaceful, what chance…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why is it that all our heroes inevitably try to kill us? From Winston Churchill to Albert Einstein, the people we laud the most were, at one point, responsible for great harm done, and not always by their own intention. \u201cMost of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions,\u201d said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-289211","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289211\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}