Hurricane Maria did major damage to the Puerto Rican telescope in 2017 that lead to the collapse of this world class iconic radio telescope 3 years later after failing to get funded and maintained. It was the largest for the USA by a long shot at 305 meters. China’s FAST became the largest at 500 meters in 2016. This is Trump’s (2017-2020) legacy for Puerto Rico.
It was featured in Goldeneye and Contact back in the 1990s.
I really liked that dish as a structure, such a shame it was allowed to just waste away.
My parents got to tour it back then when they vacationed in Puerto Rico. They said it was the coolest part of the trip.
It was also featured in Arrival.
It wasn’t just a radio telescope, but it was also a radar telescope. That’s what made it so important- it could actively measure the speed of objects in the solar system.
IIRC, FAST wasn’t designed to do that, but was supposed to be retrofitted to add that capability after Arecibo’s collapse.
“in over a century of successful use prior to the Arecibo Telescope’s collapse, all the forensic investigations agreed that such a spelter socket failure had never been reported.” The report went on: “The only hypothesis the committee could develop that provides a plausible but unprovable answer … is that the socket zinc creep was unexpectedly accelerated in the Arecibo Telescope’s uniquely powerful electromagnetic radiation environment.” In other words, the sockets’ role in suspending such a powerful radio transmitter somehow contributed to the 2020 catastrophe.
interesting.
I retract what I said. I’m an idiot. That is so clearly a spoof I should have known.
The Arecibo dish was used for the first humans intentionally sent a radio signal to possible intelligent civilizations in other solar systems. It was just a stunt, but a cool stunt. I like cool stunts that get people interested in science.
It’s disappointing that you didn’t realize your grammatical error, considering its importance to science.
