Radio Telescopes in the Distance
Several months ago I had the opportunity to visit a Satellite Center located in Thailand's Eastern Seaboard town of Chonburi. Roughly about 2 hours drive South East of Bangkok, the THEOS Center houses a number of radio telescopes focussed up in the sky at 2 satellites hovering above the Earth's atmosphere. The Thai scientists stationed there had received training in France and were part of a technology transfer from France to the kingdom of Thailand.
The satellite model is rather uninspiring, all decked out in yellow reflective panels and weighing about 3 tons, its primary purpose is to detect changes in weather patterns all over Thailand, so as to assist the rural farming populations about extreme weather conditions like storms approaching and hot spots in the countryside. They offer the services not only to the Thai Government, but also for commercial purposes.
I wonder why the neighboring countries, with all this technology readily available, and with 12 years of past experience, are still unable to prevent the out of control fires - which can be easily located, caused by slash and burn methods employed by farmers and resulting in the haze which has engulfed both Singapore and Malaysia recently ?
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