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The famous Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico will be dismantled after 57 years of service due to broken cables leading to the threat of collapse, the US National Science Foundation announced Thursday.
Two cables supporting the 900-tonne instruments for the telescope above a 1,000-foot (305-meter) diameter radio dish broke on August 10 and November 6.
Engineers fear that other cables may also break at any time, making any repair attempt excessively dangerous.
The telescope is one of the largest in the world and has been an instrument for many astronomical discoveries.
The foundation “gives priority to the safety of workers, the Arecibo Observatory staff and visitors, which makes this decision necessary, though unfortunate,” said the director of NSF Sethuraman Panchanathan.
“For nearly six decades, the Arecibo Observatory has served as a beacon for revolutionary science and what a partnership with a community can look like.”
Read also: The radio burst from inside the Milky Way may help solve the cosmic mystery
Using the hashtag “WhatAreciboMeansToMe”, messages of sadness for the news spread on Twitter by professional and amateur astronomers for decades using the telescope for their work of observation of the cosmos.
“More than a telescope, Arecibo is why I’m also in astronomy,” local astronomer Kevin Ortiz Ceballos tweeted.
Karen Masters, a professor of astrophysics at Haverford College in Pennsylvania, published a photo of herself and her child close to the parable of the radio in 2008 and said he was “heartbroken and disappointed.”
An action scene from the James Bond film Golden eye takes place above the telescope and in the film Contact an astronomer played by Jodie Foster uses the observatory in her search for alien signals.
The engineering firm that examined the structure concluded that the remaining cables were perhaps weaker than expected and recommended controlled demolition, which the foundation accepted.
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