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The famed Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, which has provided invaluable service to scientists for more than five decades, 57 years to be exact, and has established itself in a well-known culture, is doomed to be dismantled after suffering irreparable damage in recent months.
This gigantic telescope was completed in the early 1960s and instantly established itself as a powerful mechanism for astronomers, as well as for atmospheric scientists around the world.
Furthermore, for several decades this gigantic instrument has boasted a larger size and distinctive architecture than anything else before it, welcoming new possibilities for observing the universe and ultimately giving it a function that not all similar devices can. carry out.
Countless scientists and projects have used Arecibo, which, as a financially supported resource by the government, was, according to reports, “at least in part devoted to public divestments.”
Signals from this gigantic device helped inform the public about understanding stellar objects from a planet such as Mercury to distant pulsars.
(Photo: Mariordo (Mario Roberto Durán Ortiz) on Wikimedia Commons)
A detailed view of the beam steering mechanism and some antennas of the Arecibo radio telescope in Arecibo (Observatory, Puerto Rico)
Some famous projects that used Arecibo
Reports on the soon-to-be-dismantled radio telescope state: The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligent specifically used Arecibo to transfer a “high-powered message to a nearby” star cluster structured so that its world of man-made nature would become unmistakable. at least to any form of life, remotely like his.
Additionally, the organization has also been sifting through device data for years, looking for patterns that could specify smart life doing the same thing in reverse.
The highlight of this observatory in pop culture, however, is certainly its appearance in “GlodenEye”, a 1995 James Bond film, and in the hugely popular “Nintendo 64” game based on it.
Sadly, Arecibo’s infrastructure has aged, not to mention the cost of replacing some of its parts seems to have been high enough for its keepers to prove.
Damaged parts
While Arecibo has survived countless calamities, the mistreatment it has received in recent years seems too much for some of its cables. Of its 12 cables, two have broken in recent months, damaging the antenna itself.
Many suspect that the other parts of the radio telescope may already be in poor condition, and if so, this greatly increases the danger, as well as the cost of repairs.
As a result, the board of the University of Central Florida, which operates the device on behalf of the National Science Foundations, decided that a controlled recall was the only practical path to take.
According to NSF’s Sean Jones, the decision was not easy to make. He added, they understand “how much Arecibo means to the scientific community”, as well as to Puerto Rico.
No concrete plans yet
Although reports of the dismantling have already come out, there is still no concrete plan for the detailed dismantling of the facility.
However, people in the know have said that the dismantling should be done early enough to prevent further incidents from further reducing the site’s safety.
The loss of Arecibo is certainly serious and its capabilities are not exactly simulated by other similar devices in the world. However, it is no longer the largest or most sensitive observatory around.
Many successors may have been developed in the 60 years since the Arecibo operation. China reportedly just unpacked the 500-meter Aperture spherical radio telescope earlier this year, which promises to be an extremely essential facility for astronomers around the world.
READ ALSO: Kepler Space Telescope Reveals About 300 Million Habitable Planets Could Exist in the Milky Way
Find out more news and information about Radio Telescope in the Science Times.
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