Famed Puerto Rico telescope to close in blow to science, search for extraterrestrial life.

NY Post ^ | 11/20/2020 | Associated Press

[Oshkalaboomboom]

The National Science Foundation announced Thursday that it will close the huge telescope at the renowned Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico in a blow to scientists worldwide who depend on it to search for planets, asteroids and extraterrestrial life.

The independent, federally funded agency said it’s too dangerous to keep operating the single dish radio telescope — one of the world’s largest — given the significant damage it recently sustained. An auxiliary cable broke in August and tore a 100-foot hole in the reflector dish and damaged the dome above it. Then on Nov. 6, one of the telescope’s main steel cables snapped, leading officials to warn that the entire structure could collapse.

NSF officials noted that even if crews were to repair all the damage, engineers found that the structure would still be unstable in the long term.

[ArcadeQuarters]

Aliens.

[equaviator]

BS! The JWT is due to be launched soon. Look it up. We don’t need the old ground-based thing there in PR anymore, and since we don’t need it, why the hell should we want it?

[HartleyMBaldwin]

When about every other made-in-China wood screw shears off under ordinary to light driving torque, I notice.

[Hootowl99]

I strongly agree that this incident shows to be caused by long term deficient preventative maintenance. The root cause, I believe, is most likely due to chronic under funding blended with administrative level incompetence.

What a loss to science of this wonderful tool. It was structural simplicity expanded to a grand scale.

[cyclotic]

What I love about Free Republic is how often our members have personal knowledge of even the most oddball stories.

For both of you to have personal input on something as weird as this is why I spend way too much time on my healthy internet addiction at FreeRepublic.

Thanks gents.

[AZJeep]

Hurricane Maria did not caused the wires to snap. There was some damage from it, but the stuff happen just now, about (correct me) two years after the hurricane. Suddenly wires started to snap. Wires could be sabotaged. It is just my observation, but now China has the monopoly on large radio telescopes.