{"id":124043,"date":"2020-12-01T21:29:12","date_gmt":"2020-12-01T18:29:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/huge-puerto-rico-radio-telescope-already-damaged-collapses\/"},"modified":"2020-12-01T21:29:12","modified_gmt":"2020-12-01T18:29:12","slug":"huge-puerto-rico-radio-telescope-already-damaged-collapses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/huge-puerto-rico-radio-telescope-already-damaged-collapses\/","title":{"rendered":"#Huge Puerto Rico radio telescope, already damaged, collapses"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Huge Puerto Rico radio telescope, already damaged, collapses<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

The telescope\u2019s 900-ton receiver platform fell onto the reflector dish more than 400 feet below.<\/p>\n

The US National Science<\/a> Foundation had earlier announced that the Arecibo Observatory would be closed. An auxiliary cable snapp<\/a>ed in August, causing a 100-foot gash on the 1,000-foot-wide dish and damaged the receiver platform that hung above it. Then a main cable broke in early November.<\/p>\n

The collapse stunned many scientists who had relied on what was until recently the largest radio telescope in the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt sounded like a rumble. I knew exactly what it was,\u201d said Jonathan Friedman, who worked for 26 years as a senior research associate at the observatory and still lives near it. \u201cI was screaming. Personally, I was out of control\u2026. I don\u2019t have words to express it. It\u2019s a very deep, terrible feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Friedman ran up a small hill near his home and confirmed his suspicions: A cloud of dust hung in the air where the structure once stood, demolishing hopes held by some scientists that the telescope could somehow be repaired.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a huge loss,\u201d said Carmen Pantoja, an astronomer and professor at the University of Puerto Rico who used the telescope for her doctorate. \u201cIt was a chapter of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scientists worldwide had been petitioning U.S. officials and others to reverse the NSF\u2019s decision to close the observatory. The NSF said at the time that it intended to eventually reopen the visitor center and restore operations at the observatory\u2019s remaining assets, including its two LIDAR facilities used for upper atmospheric and ionospheric research, including analyzing cloud cover and precipitation data.<\/p>\n

\"This
This satellite image provided by 2020 Maxar Technologies shows the damaged radio telescope at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, Thursday, Nov. 17, 2020.<\/figcaption>
AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The telescope was built in the 1960s with money from the Defense Department amid a push to develop anti-ballistic missile defenses. It had endured hurricanes, tropical humidity and a recent string of earthquakes in its 57 years of operation.<\/p>\n

The telescope has been used to track asteroids on a path to Earth, conduct research that led to a Nobel Prize and determine if a planet is potentially habitable. It also served as a training ground for graduate students and drew about 90,000 visitors a year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am one of those students who visited it when young and got inspired,\u201d said Abel M\u00e9ndez, a physics and astrobiology professor at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo who has used the telescope for research. \u201cThe world without the observatory loses, but Puerto Rico loses even more.\u201d<\/p>\n

He last used the telescope on Aug. 6, just days before a socket holding the auxiliary cable that snapped failed in what experts believe could be a manufacturing error. The National Science Foundation, which owns the observatory that is managed by the University of Central Florida, said crews who evaluated the structure after the first incident determined that the remaining cables could handle the additional weight.<\/p>\n

But on Nov. 6, another cable broke.<\/p>\n

A spokesman for the observatory said there would be no immedia<\/a>te comment and a spokeswoman for the University of Central Florida did not return requests for comment.<\/p>\n

Scientists had used the telescope to study pulsars to detect gravitational waves as well as search for neutral hydrogen, which can reveal how certain cosmic structures are formed. About 250 scientists worldwide had been using the observatory when it closed in August, including M\u00e9ndez, who was studying stars to detect habitable plantes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m trying to recover,\u201d he said. \u201cI am still very much affected.\u201d\n <\/p><\/div>\n

If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

For forums sites go to Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

If you want to read more News<\/a> articles, you can visit our News category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Huge Puerto Rico radio telescope, already damaged, collapses” SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico \u2014 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\u2019s 900-ton receiver platform fell onto the reflector dish more than 400 feet…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":124044,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/12\/telescope-2.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[82308,5017,71461,5050,5019],"class_list":["post-124043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-12-1-20","tag-astronomy","tag-puerto-rico","tag-scientists","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}