America's largest radio telescope blind after falling cable slashes 100-foot gash in reflector dish America's largest radio telescope, the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, has been forced to shut down after a falling cable slashed a 100-foot rent in its 1,000-foot reflector dish. On Tuesday, the University of Central Florida, which helps manage the National Science Foundation facility, said that on Monday, around 02:45 …
“We’re not sure what caused the cable failure yet ..."
Hmm ....
Due to the lack of federal aid, a great deal of Puerto Rico's basic infrastructure is still in ruins after hurricanes Irma and María devastated the island, all made worse by an earthquake in January of this year.
Could this have also affected Arecibo's maintenance schedules?
On Trump's watch?
Nah!
Im-po-ssi-ble
A.
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I was able to find another picture from above that gives a different (and less alarming) view of the damage. Still bad, but this is a huge dish and only a relatively small part was damaged.This was taken by one of the scientists and posted on Twitter. The picture is near the bottom of the article.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/arecibo-observatory-in-puerto-rico-suffers-serious-damage-after-cable-breaks/ar-BB17SYKC
It's time to play... Battlefield or Real Life where people post images and you have to guess which is which.
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fvignette2.wikia.nocookie.net%2Fbattlefield%2Fimages%2Fd%2Fd1%2FMp_thedish.jpg%2Frevision%2Flatest%3Fcb%3D20151229031556&f=1&nofb=1
I miss that map. I think it was BF3 I have a great memory of a bomb run from one of the jets. On a map with a canyon. Came in from a distance and lined up a target. Knowing full well if you get lock on, they get a warning before bombs are dropped.
I was low enough that I could see the soldier hop out the tank and leg it before the bomb hit. It was amazing to see and is why the game was so great.
I'm always laughing at the search for alien civilizations, we haven't found any - I believe that there are alien civilizations out there, but could it be that there are no aliens out there as stupid as we are? America was going to shut down the Arecibo Observatory, now they are just letting it fall down - another Republican victory.
Thought they were light blue, have infra-red vision and a binary cardiovascular system?
Strangely enough my own experiences suggest that they aren't *intentionally* trying to cause an international incident (cough Tic Tac /cough) but are being a lot more careful now and using their stealth device all the time.
Incidentally the reason there are inconsistencies in many accounts seems that in their low oxygen state they look grey due to the depleted hemocyanin.
I also believe there are alien civilizations, but after we produced the Clintons, they concluded all crooked lawyers must be married to sex pests, and decided to move onto the next Galaxy
Space Clinton - "I did not have electromagnetic interactions with that galaxy".
Interesting that there are no photos of the warped beam-steering mechanism or receiver dome where the more important damage occurred, nor good identification of exactly what the failed cable was used for. Perhaps they fear if the extent of the damage were made public there would be more calls to abandon this relic and direct the funds into more up-to-date instruments since the 2017 hurricane damage has not been fully repaired either.
Relic? Ok, it's listed in the US Heritage register, and not sure if that's like the UK's listing and creates obligations to keep it in good order. And I'm curious if it really is a relic. From a quick look at the wiki article, it seems to have suffered from various funding cuts from NASA, NSF etc. It's not entirely clear exactly how much it costs to operate, but still seems to be doing useful science.
I've no idea what 'upgrade' costs would be though given one fundamental cost would seem to be finding a location for, and building a newer/bigger dish. Which may be a political thing, ie building something bigger than China's FAST for bragging rights. Curious if big dishes are really considered relics by radio and radar astronomers though.
It only detects a small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Surely we should be looking on the subspace channels? Aliens would suely be using the hailing frequency? A detector for quantum entangled neutrinos would in any case be far smaller. Especially if it used blockchains in the cloud.
Oh, I'm surprised to see from the photo that the dish is essentially a giant "hammock" and is suspended a few metres above the ground. I'd always had the impression from somewhere that it was carved out of or cast into a natural depression directly on the ground, sort of like a giant skateboard park. oops!
