We’ve mentioned it several times before here. And, despite an online “Save Arecibo” petition started over the long holiday weekend, one that had gathered over 60,000 supporters… it seems the dish in Puerto Rico is truly at a permanently-silenced… end-point.
At around 8 AM local time, at the site, a primary suspension cable holding the antenna assembly (see vintage inset image, at left) aloft… snapped. The entire rig — over 900 tons of mass — then immediately crashed through the plane of the dish, shattering the center. [There were already large sections of the dish, near the edges, that had collapsed into the crater floor (see below right inset image), due to earlier cable failures.]
I am afraid all eyes are now on China — and its mega-dish. She served humanity well — but she is now permanently… offline. Silent. Here’s a bit, from the AP’s on site reporting, late this morning:
…A huge, already damaged radio telescope in Puerto Rico that has played a key role in astronomical discoveries for more than half a century completely collapsed on Tuesday.
The telescope’s 900-ton receiver platform and the Gregorian dome — a structure as tall as a four-story building that houses secondary reflectors — fell onto the northern portion of the vast reflector dish more than 400 feet below.
The U.S. National Science Foundation had earlier announced that the Arecibo Observatory would be closed. An auxiliary cable snapped in August, causing a 100-foot gash on the 1,000-foot-wide (305-meter-wide) dish and damaged the receiver platform that hung above it. Then a main cable broke in early November.
The collapse at 7:56 a.m. on Tuesday wasn’t a surprise because many of the wires in the thick cables holding the structure snapped over the weekend, Ángel Vázquez, the telescope’s director of operations, told The Associated Press….
Installing a new telescope would cost up to $350 million, money the NSF doesn’t have, he said, adding it would have to come from U.S. Congress….
That is highly unlikely. I supposed we ought to just be thankful for the discoveries there made. And get the Webb Space Telescope up into a LaGrange point orbit as soon as is possible — probably early 2022, now. Onward — smiling into the sunshine here, just the same. Be excellent to one another.
नमस्ते
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