It's Official. No More Astronomy at Arecibo - Universe Today
It's Official. No More Astronomy at Arecibo - Universe Today
Even though the National Science Foundation announced last year that it would not rebuild or replace the iconic Arecibo radio dish in Puerto Rico — which collapsed in 2020 – a glimmer of hope remained among supporters that the remaining astronomy infrastructure would be utilized in some way. ...
Rip Arecibo. Fucking politicians and asshole contractors fucking everything up as usual. I don't know if they've finished their investigation, but it sounded like the collapse was a result of not enough funding and contractors skimping on build quality.
Sad that it's gone. Kinda curious if part of the reason for not rebuilding it is due to the possibility of more frequent hurricanes that are even more severe. Regardless of why, I hope the US builds another next gen one to rebuild our capabilities to detect asteroids and other stellar phenomena.
Honestly, that probably is part of it. That being said, as a radio telescope Arecibo wasn't really used for asteroids or anything else within the solar system except as a giant transmission antenna. The kind of things Arecibo was designed to observe was radio sources on the far edges of the visible universe.
Honestly, I don't think another Arecibo is even necessary, it was a product of the technology of the time. In more recent times there's been a shift towards using networked arrays of radio telescopes, rather than just one big one. The EHT Array used to directly image Sag A* provides an effective aperture that a single telescope could never be able to match.
I know, but I want a constellation of telescopes that continues to improve.
My hope is that we eventually get good enough at autonomous robots that we can have robots start building massive telescopes- like Arecibo- on planets as far away as Pluto. Anything to improve our imaging capabilities and peer even further back in time and space. We're quite aways from there. But the possibilities excite me!
We'll always have goldeneye 💜