Cable Failures Endanger Renowned Puerto Rico Radio Telescope (apnews.com) 58
The giant, aging cables that support one of the world's largest single-dish radio telescopes are slowly unraveling in this U.S. territory, pushing an observatory renowned for its key role in astronomical discoveries to the brink of collapse. The Associated Press reports: The Arecibo Observatory, which is tethered above a sinkhole in Puerto Rico's lush mountain region, boasts a 1,000-foot-wide (305-meter-wide) dish featured in the Jodie Foster film "Contact" and the James Bond movie "GoldenEye." The dish and a dome suspended above it have been used to track asteroids headed toward Earth, conduct research that led to a Nobel Prize and helped scientists trying to determine if a planet is habitable. Last week, one of the telescope's main steel cables that was capable of sustaining 1.2 million pounds (544,000 kilograms) snapped under only 624,000 pounds (283,000 kilograms). That failure further mangled the reflector dish after an auxiliary cable broke in August, tearing a 100-foot hole and damaging the dome above it.
Officials said they were surprised because they had evaluated the structure in August and believed it could handle the shift in weight based on previous inspections. It's a blow for the telescope that more than 250 scientists around the world were using. The facility is also one of Puerto Rico's main tourist attractions, drawing some 90,000 visitors a year. Research has been suspended since August, including a project aiding scientists in their search for nearby galaxies. Some new cables are scheduled to arrive next month, but officials said funding for repairs has not been worked out with federal agencies. Scientists warn that time is running out. Only a handful of cables now support the 900-ton platform. The observatory estimates the damage at more than $12 million and is seeking money from the National Science Foundation, an independent federal agency that owns the observatory. The report notes that the observatory is considered crucial for the study of pulsars, which are the remains of stars that can be used to detect gravitational waves. It's also used to search for natural hydrogen, which can reveal how certain cosmic structures are formed.
Officials said they were surprised because they had evaluated the structure in August and believed it could handle the shift in weight based on previous inspections. It's a blow for the telescope that more than 250 scientists around the world were using. The facility is also one of Puerto Rico's main tourist attractions, drawing some 90,000 visitors a year. Research has been suspended since August, including a project aiding scientists in their search for nearby galaxies. Some new cables are scheduled to arrive next month, but officials said funding for repairs has not been worked out with federal agencies. Scientists warn that time is running out. Only a handful of cables now support the 900-ton platform. The observatory estimates the damage at more than $12 million and is seeking money from the National Science Foundation, an independent federal agency that owns the observatory. The report notes that the observatory is considered crucial for the study of pulsars, which are the remains of stars that can be used to detect gravitational waves. It's also used to search for natural hydrogen, which can reveal how certain cosmic structures are formed.
US infrastructure crumbling. (Score:5, Insightful)
this is probably the best image of the US infrastructure crumbling.
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Yeah, lets take away 1000 stimulus checks and fix the dish. Fuck it, lets take away 3000 and replace all the cables.
Think of it more as a choice between paying 1000 people to do nothing, and paying a selected 1000 people to fix the instrument.
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2-ply dollar bills (Score:2)
2-ply dollar bills ?
Now that's innovation !
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this is probably the best image of the US infrastructure crumbling.
What is ironic is that infrastructure repair/renewal was one of the few platforms Trump ran on that could pull bipartisan support. What did he do about infrastructure after he was elected? Nothing, unless you consider repairing border fence to be infrastructure. Our roads are in horrible shape. We have some of the worst telecommunication infrastructure in the developed world. Our bridges and dams are rusting and crumbling. If you want some stimulus, fix all that.
Re:US infrastructure crumbling. (Score:4, Insightful)
Feel free to assign blame to one of the 535 in Congress who apparently stood by like mewling babies.
Generally I would assign most of the blame to Moscow Mitch, who mostly refused to allow congress to even consider any mportant legislation which threatened his personal ideology or which didn't benefit him personally. The rest would go to his enablers and fellow travelers.
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this is probably the best image of the US infrastructure crumbling.
What is ironic is that infrastructure repair/renewal was one of the few platforms Trump ran on that could pull bipartisan support. What did he do about infrastructure after he was elected? Nothing, unless you consider repairing border fence to be infrastructure.
Pennsylvania has embarked upon a program of road repair that is quite extensive. Which is good, because we have a lot of roads to maintain. It is working well. A lot of decent paying jobs have been created in the process.
Here's the problem though. It is financed by the "T" word.
Basic math tells us that unless there is some money to throw at a problem, it doesn't get fixed.
The present path of allowing infrastructure to crumble, while treating any efforts to maintain it as some sort of socialist plot to
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Lets be really really honest about the situation though. The Federal budget is plenty big enough to make repairs to the roads, and other public facing properties. Its just it gets spent on other things. Other things for which if Joe Public was actually consider the federal budget line for line would probably say are LESS important than infrastructure and if ask to chose among them would pick repave I-81.
Which is not to say that none of these things have value just that, the priorities are not correct and t
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Lets be really really honest about the situation though. The Federal budget is plenty big enough to make repairs to the roads, and other public facing properties. Its just it gets spent on other things. Other things for which if Joe Public was actually consider the federal budget line for line would probably say are LESS important than infrastructure and if ask to chose among them would pick repave I-81.
Which is not to say that none of these things have value just that, the priorities are not correct and they wont be corrected because the system is broken.
I can surely agree on that. The sad situation is that the USA has become a turtle that is stuck on it's back. We can't get up.
The problem of course is that we are in the infrastructure crumbling phase. So many things have been left to deteriorate that it becomes difficult to assign priority. And waiting for the Feds is like waiting for the Rapture or the end of the Mayan Calendar.
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It was designed, built, funded, and operated by American government and educational facilities. It's infrastructure. It's American Infrastructure.
Re:US infrastructure crumbling. (Score:5, Informative)
Except it isn't "US infrastructure". It is owned by The Ana G. Méndez University National Science Foundation of the University of Central Florida, not the U.S. government.
You seem to have got three institutions munged together here.
UCF and Universidad Ana G. Méndez operate the Arecibo observatory under an agreement with the NSF.
Arecibo is an NSF facility, and so very much part of the US.
How do you define "infrastructure"? (Score:3)
That's the problem. Everyone has a different opinion of what infrastructure really means to them. People with common sense would say that it means replacing rusting bridges and filling potholes. But in the halls of government, infrastructure really means a massive slush fund for pet projects that elected officials get to tack their name onto. The AOC Memorial Beer Garden has a nice ring to it.
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Last week, one of the telescope's main steel cables that was capable of sustaining 1.2 million pounds (544,000 kilograms) snapped under only 624,000 pounds (283,000 kilograms).
What is it with US news and documentary sources insisting on using the most inappropriate units possible for large objects? It's 500 tons (close enough) and 280 tons, not 3,141,592,653 ounces or whatever ridiculous weight measure is being reported. Every time I see something like this I have to first convert it into some measure that makes sense before I can get any idea of what's really involved.
Timing (Score:2)
Of course, while this is happening, the Chinese have commissioned a brand new radio telescope, very similar in purpose... only bigger:
China's 500-meter FAST radio telescope is now operational [phys.org] (as of January 2020)
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Of course, while this is happening, the Chinese have commissioned a brand new radio telescope, very similar in purpose... only bigger:
And while THAT is happening, we have a new, privately-funded optical telescope all ready to start construction, except for objections by a stone-age religion:
https://www.tmt.org/ [tmt.org]
I say let's build that one in China too. That was it actually gets done.
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It took longer to get legal environmental permission to dredge a South Carolina 5 feet deeper to handle Superpanamax ships (Panama Canal size expansion) than it did to build the thing in the first place long ago, with all its fabled difficulties.
An empire prospers when it keeps the trade routes open. It falters when it turns to lording over itself.
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Of course, while this is happening, the Chinese have commissioned a brand new radio telescope, very similar in purpose... only bigger:
China's 500-meter FAST radio telescope is now operational [phys.org] (as of January 2020)
From what I've been told by people who know, is that their Telescope has some problems and limitations. Bigger is not always better, as at one point, the Russians built the largest telescope in the world, but it was mostly usless https://skyandtelescope.org/as... [skyandtelescope.org]
Although they are working on fixes, so there's good hope.
But back to the original subject, I'm suspecting that without quick remediation, China's Telescope may be in a class of 1 pretty soon.
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Of course, while this is happening, the Chinese have commissioned a brand new radio telescope, very similar in purpose... only bigger:
FAST was "commissioned" in 2007. "First light" was in 2016. The recent announcement was the start of regular operations. However, it is only a receiver. Arecibo can transmit signals. So it is more than a telescope it is also a radar. Arecibo is truly unique and has an amazing track record of scientific achievement. There are other differences. [wikipedia.org]
Privately fund it, as charity (Score:2, Interesting)
Government money is the sweetest there is, because the people paying don't really have any choice in the matter, and you don't have very close scrutiny in how it's spent. I know from experience. Yes, getting big projects funded through donation is hard, but it does a better job at ensuring that the people paying know what's being done and its value. There's crowd funding; maybe people the right kind of rich suburban kid would be willing to volunteer in the repair as well.
It should not be up to X how Y sh
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This, 100%. Let's privately fund the military, as a charity, and get all those military-industrial-complex freeloaders off my tax dime. Then I'll have plenty of money to spend on the science I want to do with the money I earn in "commerce".
Does this plan also mean that capitalists who can't be bothered to do commerce are removed from control of money? According to his own accounting Jeff Bezos loses money trying to do commerce every year, but the government keeps giving him more of our money to waste. Tax b
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At least some of the military is indeed "necessary for the survival of the state", so there's a big difference between that and this basic science. You may be able to argue for some science funding to support the development of weapons that are necessary for the survival of the state. The border lines defining "necessary", "survival", and "state" will have some unavoidable political components, which can be duked out through elections and legislators. But even cash register lady almost certainly acknowle
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At least some of the military is indeed "necessary for the survival of the state"
Exactly SOME being the operative word. I would argue we should draw a line carefully. Humanitarian causes should be handled by a not directly tax payer funded force. The military should be focused on defense (keeping others out of and from physically harming American territories). Securing resources and necessary trade routes.
Sites like Syria and Afghanistan of little or no strategic value should not become a theater. We should not care care if Putin invades Georgia or another former soviet client state for
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How far have we fallen from our founding ideals.
The PRIMARY purpose of the federal government is to provide for the common defense, after that, we are generally pushing the government into business lines that are not clearly defined in our founding documents.
You can argue that "for the common good" covers much of these additional functions, but we have clearly stepped way out onto a slippery slope when we start having the federal government do things like welfare, Medicaid, and education.
So, like it or
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I understand you're purity-based ideals that the fed should ONLY buy bullets, commission ships and pay soldiers, but there simply is more to it than that. Our highway system was originally built with the idea that it could be useful to
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You misrepresent my stated position to make your argument.
I'm not anti-government, nor am I advocating we don't fund science. I was actually defending the practice of funding the military from the front on assault of the previous poster who was suggesting that we should privately fund the military. I was arguing that if we fund things like education, welfare and Medicaid, which are secondary priorities, then funding the military is a no brainer. Besides, I don't think this observatory is a poster child fo
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at 12 million dollars to operate a year, the dish is pretty darn cheap to operate, and I understand that scientists were actually still using it, up until it broke. The average NSF grant is somewhere around 300k over 3 years, and that barely funds a grad student or two plus supplies and equipment. Seems shortsighted to close down such a huge facility just to fund a few extra rooms with people.
Re: Privately fund it, as charity (Score:2)
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The military takes 15% of all spending. The rest of discretionary spending is for stuff like the FDA so grandma doesn't pass out on your front porch because of some dodgy pills she took, NiH so you can get new cures for diseases, etc. Discretionary spending is rising very slowly.
Non-discretionary is about 2/3's of the budget. And it is growing so fast that very, very shortly Social Security and Medicare are threatened. So unless you find a way to rein in that spending, no amount of toying with discretionary
Re:Privately fund it, as charity (Score:5, Insightful)
However when one digs into the details, one soon realizes that technological advancement, economic activity, high standard of living, and social progress do not appear in a vacuum. They occur when the local context supports them. In particular, putting funding into basic research is a way to generate a local ecosystem where one has access to highly-skilled people, where new ideas and technologies appear, where citizens are politically engaged, etc. It's more than just "workforce development" and "technology incubation" (though it does achieve those aims); it's about creating environments where progress thrives, which ultimately benefits all citizens. One can look at the diversity of countries that have attempted different approaches to confirm that the most desirable places to live are the countries with the most technological/economic progress, which are the ones that invested in themselves in these seemingly unnecessary ways (such as basic science).
Of course, finding the right amount of common funding to divert into things like education and basic science is not easy. And of course it depends on how strongly one values the kinds of progress that flow out from these investments. But there is a very good reason why it is in the interests of all taxpayers to subsidize a certain amount of basic science.
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One can look at the diversity of countries that have attempted different approaches to confirm that the most desirable places to live are the countries with the most technological/economic progress
The question is, does the tail wag the dog. Look the US vs the UK through most of the mid century. Was it political will investing in basic science that made the US a better place to live or did it have something to do with one country having been ravage by WWII and WWI before that and the other comparatively untouched other than having lost a lot of young men and expended some treasure.
We could make the argument all the investment in basic science up until perhaps the '80s was an accident of history rather
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If we ever get to a place where we actually decide where our tax dollars go, can we exclude those non-payers from the benefits of these programs?
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Why don't you have a look at the platform.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/w... [wikimedia.org]
Telescopes need to be of a certain size to see a certain thing. The physics work out such that if you're trying to look at something very small or very distant the receivers need to be larger. The radar dome alone looks about 3 stories tall (similar to many military radomes). It's got an industrial cooling unit the size of a bus on top of it, no doubt to cool equipment that might be 30 years old or more, and probably needs to be kep
Many smaller One big (Score:1)
Is there still need for very large diameter radio telescopes? I was under the impression that many smaller dishes connected in a grid would be even more powerful than a single dish.
Re:Many smaller One big (Score:4, Insightful)
Synthetic aperture arrays have resolution equivalent to their total diameter -- so they can resolve objects as small (in viewing angle) as a giant dish -- but only as sensitive as their total area. Because area grows with the square of radius, ignoring defects of local noise, you need 100 small antennas to detect signals as faint as a single dish with 10 times the radius.
To use some real-world examples, Arecibo is 1000 feet (304 m) across. The Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) has 66 dishes: 54 are 12 m in diameter, and 12 are 7 m across. ALMA has better angular resolution, but Arecibo has more than 11 times the total area, so it can detect much fainter signals.
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Get out of here!
Re: Many smaller One big (Score:2)
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You are correct. This is exactly why we DON'T need this thing. An array of dishes and some fancy programming work just as good or better and are cheaper and more flexible than this thing.
IMHO- The best thing we can do is decommission the facility safely and send it to the scrap yards.
Re: Many smaller One big (Score:2)
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As anyone who has spent weeks digging at the bottom of a doline in hope of finding "Caverns Measureless to Man" (a Coleridge [wikipedia.org]- the International unit of cavern area, defined in lines 4-5) could tell you.
Have you been watching those
Dupe from last week? (Score:3)
I'm guessing the powers to be of Slashdot want to keep this white elephant because this is the second story about it in the same number of weeks.
Come on folks, there are cheaper ways to do what this project can do with an array of dishes. Maybe it's time for bringing this thing's life to a close, honor it for what it has accomplished, and move on.
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Planned Maintenance. (Score:3)
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I bet they're using a standard cable size - quadrupled or 6-
This was the SETI dish (Score:3)
The data for the Seti@home came from there.
The extraterrestrials do not want us to know that they are out there, hence the sabotage.
The Administration saves the day! (Score:3)
Breaking news: Forty pallets of paper towels are being rushed to Arecibo.
Try for some of that Hollywood money (Score:2)
They've been making money off aliens for years.
Challenge musk (Score:2)