WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Astronomer Joe Camelopardalis says he'd travel a light year for a Cancer stick, and one of these days, it will probably be cheaper to do exactly that.
Nicotine junkies across the nation are hoping the Obama administration abandons a plan announced Friday to fund NASA's $1.6-billion wide-field infrared survey telescope with a $9.00 per pack cigarette tax hike.
The 1.5-meter (5-ft.) observatory will be capable of detecting the glowing ember of a woman smoking on an exoplanet in the Virgo cluster, even though that radiation has come a long way, baby.
Launch is set for 2014, but the cigarette tax hike would remain in effect indefinitely.
Camelopardalis explained that dark energy in the form of anti-smokers has created physical boundaries and bent laws to annihilate smokers' rights. What this means is that even though the universe continues to expand, many people will have difficulty finding tangible space and time to light up as their cigarette money disappears from view with increasing speed.
He said the resulting monetary vortex matters because it has created a black hole that sucks funds away from smokers, stripping them of resources and sapping their energy, blackening their lungs as cumulative effects of the ensuing time dilation cause them to pop out of existence ahead of time, exposing the singular gravity of the situation.
The wide-field infrared survey telescope itself will study a lot of scientific mumbo-jumbo far too technical to discuss here, Camelopardalis said.
