For the second time in just a matter of months, a cable accident at Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory has caused even more damage to one of the world’s largest and most powerful radio telescopes.
In August Gust, astronomers and science-lovers were surprised to see a huge hole burst from a huge reflector dish of the same facility, a broken supporting cable fell and broke into the structure, which was about 30 meters (100 feet) long. . .
In the months that followed, the observatory’s engineers and workers are preparing for complex repair jobs with preliminary operations starting this week. Unfortunately, another cable failure that took place at local time on Friday evening has now further complicated the situation.
“This is definitely not what we wanted, but the important thing is that no one was injured,” says Francisco Cordova, director of the observatory.
“We are considering our assessment and safety safety in planning repairs starting Tuesday. Now this.”
Prior to this year’s accidents, the Arecibo Observatory in 2019. (UCF)
According to the University of Central Florida (UCF), run by the Resibo Observatory on behalf of the National Science Foundation, the second cable incident has little to do with the first.
Both cables were connected to a similar support tower, and it is possible that a second break was initiated by additional stress after the first failure.
Facility inspectors had been inspecting all cables since the accident in August, and noticed broken wires on the cable last week, possibly due to a quarrel over the extra load. Unfortunately, before any remedial stop-guards were put in place, another cable also gave way, falling on the dish, causing further damage to it, and even damaging nearby cables.
Working closely with engineers brought in to assess the situation, UCF will expedite ongoing repair plans with a view to reducing stress on the remaining cables as quickly as possible. Two new cables are already heading to the observatory, and the team will continue to evaluate the design while waiting for parts to arrive.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty until we can stabilize the structure,” Cordova says. We are evaluating the situation with our experts and hope to give more to share soon. “
What makes the whole repair and fortification project more challenging is the era of Arecibo: historic historic facility built in the 1960s, and the world’s largest single-hole radio telescope held for more than half a century – until it was superseded by China. Until come. Even more prestigious is the 500-meter aperture spherical telescope (FAST), which began its testing phase in 2016 and became fully operational in January.
During its long service, the Arecibo facility has achieved dozens of astronomical targets, observing and recording new scientific measurements of atoms in distant exoplanets, asteroids, pulsars, radio emissions and distant galaxies.
The observatory has also been at the forefront of extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI), and in 1974 a leading attempt to transmit intercellular radio signals was the Arecibo message transmitter.
In terms of its size it would have been adopted by Fast, but the Arecibo Observatory is expected to be discovered many decades after that, but only if its serious and seemingly mounting structural issues could be improved.
“This isn’t good, but we’re committed to getting the facility back on track,” says Cordova. “It is a very important tool for the advancement of science.”
That’s certainly true, but it’s hard to be sure how serious the damage is to an elderly facility that is already in operation by humanity visiting the moon, and how powerful or corrective this event will be in the end, if other accidents happen to be alone. Let. Short term.
There is hope for a positive outcome here, and emergency measures can stabilize this pillar of 20th century astronomy. But before this recent cable break, the observatory was still receiving repairs for damage caused by Hurricane Maria, which hit Puerto Rico in 2017.
“It’s not a beautiful picture,” said Joanna Rankin, a radio astronomer at the University of Vermont. Science. “This is very serious.”
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