Activists scale government building in climate protest

There has been much talk lately about how Manitoba can strengthen its economy and improve its general well-being. Adding a third component to our education system, one that would be equal in funding and recognition to K-12 and post-secondary education, would do just that.

That third component, adult basic education, already exists, but with inadequate funding and little recognition.

Adult basic education includes adult learning centres that offer mature high school diplomas to those who have not previously completed high school, and adult literacy programs that bring adults up to high school entry level.

Adult basic education works well. Since 2003, some 25,000 Manitobans have earned their mature high school diplomas. Enough graduates move off employment and income assistance, saving the provincial government money, and into full-time employment, increasing the government’s tax revenue, so that over a 10-year period the government makes more than it spends on adult basic education. The system pays for itself.

On Sunday, Aug. 30, a Falcon Heavy rocket delivered the Nancy Grace Roman space telescope onto a direct transfer trajectory to its permanent home at the Lagrange Two Point (L2), 1.5-million km from Earth. In 100 days it will reach its station, power up, and start observing the universe.

Astronomers will use it to try to understand the nature of dark matter, which makes up most of the mass in the universe (but some say may not even exist).

It is expected to find up to 100,000 new exoplanets circling other stars, and may be able to spot ones even smaller than Mars. Current methods can only see much bigger ones.

It will test a new technology called a coronagraph, which may one day be able to detect life on some of those planets by analyzing the light reflected from them. It would be nice to have a better answer to scientist Enrico Fermi’s famous question: “Where is everybody?”