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In a conversation with Caracol Radio, Bogota-based astrophysicist and researcher Juan Diego Soler, of the Max Planck Institute of Astronomy, Germany, said this is another tragedy for Puerto Rico, which has been devastated by the passage Hurricane María, in 2017, which began to ruin the main dish of the observatory, considered for years the largest on the planet and star of Hollywood films, such as ‘Contact’ (1997), with Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey, or ‘Goldeneye’ (1995), by James Legame.
According to the expert, the hurricane season this year is added to the passage of María, which has been extended more than expected, and the cut of funds by the United States government, which supports the operation and maintenance of this important observatory. : “Puerto Rico is bankrupt”, claims the astrophysicist from Bogota.
“On November 1st, their eviction was announced to look for alternatives, but they did not imagine it would fall [antes del desmonte]”Soler pointed out to the radio station.
Why was the Arecibo telescope important?
The curious thing about this telescope is that in its beginnings 57 years ago, according to Dr. Soler, it was designed to detect ballistic missiles, “as part of the ARPA system, to defend against the Soviet Union”, before it became an astronomical observatory.
Through this telescope it was discovered that the Moon was solid; the observatory was also part of the planetary defense system in order to detect solid bodies that can collide with the Earth, therefore with the collapse of the Arecibo observatory the planet is more exposed to this type of phenomena, as it cannot detect them over time, as revealed by the specialized portal Spazio, if It is taken into account that Arecibo is one of only two observatories to detect and help mitigate the impact that a solid body from space could have on our planet.
The Arecibo telescope could detect an asteroid that could potentially cause damage to Earth by using high-resolution radar images to see what the object looked like, predict its trajectory and identify if it was a threat to human life, says Diego Soler.
“In 2018, when the observatory stopped working, that window was closed to defend us from asteroid systems,” says Soler, referring to the Arecibo telescope which is one of two dedicated to this work.
In November, its dismantling was announced
The famous Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico was about to be dismantled after 57 years of service as it could collapse at any time after damage from high winds, the United States National Science Foundation (NSF) announced.
On 10 August and 6 November, two cables that held the 900-ton telescope on a 305-meter diameter satellite dish broke.
Engineers feared that other cables could also break at any time, making any repair attempt excessively dangerous, as happened on Tuesday.
The Phys.org portal points out that the news literally made many of the respondents on the subject in Puerto Rico cry.
For example, the astrobiologist of the University of Puerto Rico in Arecibo, Abel Méndez, said he was “devastated”, underlines the journal Nature, which recalls that from Arecibo the first earthly message was sent in 1974 to possible aliens who could listen to it. and from where the first planet outside our solar system was discovered.
This video from The Truth records the news of the collapse of the giant Arecibo telescope structure in Puerto Rico:
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