OT: Arecibo radio telescope to close.
LeatherGryphon
Posts: 11,674
in The Commons
Damaged iconic big dish to close, too expensive/dangerous to maintain.
Comment: You try standing outside in Puerto Rico for 52 years and see how long you hold up.
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Comments
Sigh.
I actually visited the dish about ... 20 years ago. It's very odd. Like, you stand at the edge, look one way to see one side, look the other way and way over there, another side. Big mooring blocks for the cables that hold it up, blocks as big as small buildings.
Puerto Rico has a lot of limestone underneath, and sinkholes; Arecibo dish was basically built into a sinkhole. There are good bat caves in the area.
I've only been to little university observatories even though I've visited Arizona & places that have the huge ones. I'd like to get an inexpensive home telescope but since I moved I live in a house where there is a lot of light polution. I guess 1st I will have the old streetlamp in my yard cut off but the utility company claims it's mine not theirs so I have to cut it off myself. And I'm like yeah, whatever, there is not even a switch for me to use.
I'vre always wanted to see that dish. Actually lived in PR for 3 years but never got over there. Priorities and all that.
Probably the most well known appearance of the Arecibo dish was in James Bond movie Goldeneye...
I crunched many a Seti at Home package using Arecibo data on my computers back in the day... stopped doing that with my most recent systems, but I like to think I did my part in helping everyone sift through that data.
The B-52s have now officially outlasted Arecibo... around 57 years average service life of the current fleet, and no immediate plans to retire them. But that's even more O.T.
Anyways, thanks to all of the Arecibo team members for all of their hard work over the years!
...aww bugger,
Wonder if recent events like the two hurricanes and earthquake didn't contribute to hastening its demise.
The main issue was failure of the main support cables, one in August and the second in early November. The earthquake you mentioned may have played into the first failure, and no doubt there is some corrosion in play. The second failure was definitely due to an overstressed cable, thanks to the first cable failing. We've lost a number of bridges over the years due to corroding cables...
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/11/19/1012335/the-second-largest-radio-telescope-in-the-world-is-shutting-down/
The telescope has suffered damage from hurricanes and such before, and other parts of the Arecibo facility will continue to operate, as noted in the article above. There are other instruments on site that they are still using. Arecibo has been stuggling with funding in recent years as well, but then that's been the case in a number of scientific areas.
Once the radio telescope structure completely fails, alleviating the unsafe conditions via a complete failure, I suppose they could look at rebuilding it, but the funding probably isn't there in the first place, and there are other radio telescope facilities that can pick up the slack, that are a bit more flexible in their usage - they aren't 'fixed' structures as far as viewing angles are concerned. I'm specifically thinking of the VLA facility in New Mexico, among others.
China built the largest radio telescope a few years back, that being the FAST:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02790-3
Still, more sources of data good, so Arecibo will still be missed by researchers!
Very bad news. As a long time Planetary Society member I also contributed time (and 2 power supplies) to SETI@Home. Things get older and the effort to maintain such a structure must be enormous.