The world’s most marked astronomical observations have fallen out of repair. Now it threatens a complete collapse.
After two unexpected cables broke, engineers determined that the Arecibo Observatory’s 1,000-foot (305-meter) radio telescope was so structurally unrealistic that any worker who tried to fix it would risk their lives. So the National Science Foundation, which owns the Puerto Rico Telescope, has decided to demolish it.
Engineers are now in the race to figure out how to safely deconstruct one of the world’s largest radio telescopes before it crashes on its own. This structure is so unstable that even engineers cannot approach it to assess the risk and timing of such a collapse.
“Even attempts to stabilize or test cables can accelerate catastrophic failures,” Ralph Gaume, director of the NSF’s astronomical science division, told a news conference Thursday morning.
‘It’s like losing someone important in your life’
In its 57-year lifespan, the Arecibo Telescope is dangerous for asteroids near Earth, searching for signs of alien life and discovering the first planet outside our solar system. In 1974, Arecibo released the most powerful broadcast Earth sent to communicate with potential aliens. In 2016, he discovered the first repeated rapid radio explosions – mysterious space signals that scientists now think come from dead stars.
But shortly after the tropical storm Isaas passed over the island, Are Recipro’s troubles began in Are Gust. A 3-inch-thick supporting cable on one of the telescope’s three towers came out of its socket and crashed into the reflector dish below. It rips a 100-foot gash into the panels.
On August 10, 2020, a hole burst in the Aresibo Observatory’s 1,000-foot-wide reflector dish when the cable fell.
Arecibo Observatory
Then in early November, just before starting repairs to begin, a 15,000-pound main cable from the same tower broke and the dish crashed. Engineers thought the structure was still strong enough to avoid another crash – and that the cable was carrying only 60% of its estimated load capacity – but the failure proved them wrong. They have decided that they will no longer be able to trust any of the remaining cables.
Both were supporting a formidable metal platform hanging on a failed cable dish. If another cable from the same tower fails, the engineers met, the platform will come with it.
“The entire 900-ton platform will collapse into the main disc, and it is possible that the three main towers, which are more than 300 feet high, will overturn,” Gaum said.
Arecibo Observatory as seen in 2012. The platform and the Gregorian dome are stuck on reflector dishes.
Universal Images Group by Getty Images
Deconstructing the telescope means giving up any chance of saving it, but it is a way of action recommended by three engineering companies.
“It’s not easy for the NSF to make this decision. But public safety is our number one priority.” Said Sean John, assistant director of the NSF’s Directorate of Mathematical and Physical Sciences.
Moving quickly, the NSF hopes to collect buildings that have fallen directly under one of the telescope towers. That way, the Arecibo Observatory could remain open – but without its intended facility.
“When I heard this news, I was completely devastated,” Abel Mendez, director of the Planetary Habitat Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo, told Business Insider. He has been around the observatory since he was 10 and has worked with him professionally for the past decade.
“It’s hard to take. It’s like losing someone important in your life. Yes, 2020 – it’s not good,” he said.
The USA has lost its best planet hunter and alien seeker
The loss of Arecibo’s telescope is a major blow to the human quest for alien life, our ability to defend the planet from asteroids, and the whole field of radio astronomy.
Mendez said that although ci resibo cannot detect potentially dangerous space rocks, it is important in their investigation: the observatory can decrypt such objects from Dar through their shape, rotation, surface features and space.
An artist’s depiction of the asteroid effect 65 million years ago that caused dinosaurs to disappear.
Don Davis / NASA
Without that data, it is more difficult to know whether asteroids are harming the Earth.
Gaume said the Arecibo Observatory plans to work with scientists who intend to use the telescope to find ways to transfer their research elsewhere. Other NSF facilities – the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Virginia and the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia – could potentially take up some Arecibo science.
However, Mendez said Green Bank is only 10% to 20% sensitive to weak radio signals such as Arecibo. He therefore thinks that the death of the telescope effectively ends the U.S. opportunity in a comprehensive project to detect radio waves from alien technology.
“This is the place where we should do something that is more sensitive or more sensitive than Arecibo, it’s faster in China now,” Mendez said, referring to the five-hundred-meter-aperture circular radio telescope in Guizhou province. “The United States lost all that ability because it doesn’t have Arecibo.”
Arecibo and Fast, radio astronomy, had the Earth’s “two big eyes,” Meredith said.
“If you’re looking at a source of interest that’s in a weak radio spectrum, you need two large radio telescopes: one pointing at something during the day and the other at night.” “If you lose the ci recipes, then you lose the ability to monitor – 24 hours a day – an obscure source of radio signals.”
He added: “Now we have only one eye.”
‘We are working against the clock’
It will take about five or six weeks to figure out how to safely deconstruct the Ci Resibo telescope. Engineers will remotely evaluate their options, including slippery drone aerial photos.
Engineers are also considering ways to purchase extra time, such as tilting the towers potentially a few inches to reduce the weight on the remaining cables.
“We’re working against the clock,” Gaume said.
The technical reports that spell out Arecibo’s death are embedded below.
If engineers can disassemble the telescope before it destroys itself, the Arecibo Observatory will still be able to do some scientific research. Its LIDAR lasers can study the Earth’s atmosphere and ionosphere. It also has a facility on Culebra Island that collects data about cloud cover and rainfall.
Future researchers can still analyze data archived from a telescope.
