Iconic Arecibo Radio Telescope Has Collapsed - IT Pro - Geeks

The striking and well-known Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico collapsed after the cables came loose. The telescope was recently heavily damaged in a storm, after which the decision was taken to dismantle it.

Due to the release of the cables, the large set of instruments that hung above the dish, fell down. That instrumentation was connected to three poles by cables and contained the radio receiver, which could move along rails to listen to different regions of the sky. Being on Twitter images appeared which shows that the 900-ton construction has fallen into the dish and the cables have also disappeared. The radio receiver was located 137 meters above the dome, which has a diameter of 350 meters.

The administrator of the Arecibo Observatory, the National Science Foundation, confirms that the hanging platform has come down. The foundation’s technicians are still investigating the impact. Construction problems began in August when a cable came loose from the telescope. It was then decided to stabilize the structure. That turned out to be insufficient, because on November 6, another cable was released.

This increased the pressure on the remaining cables and there were fears that the scaffolding would collapse. Repairing would be a difficult job, as an analysis showed, because it would lead to life-threatening situations. On November 19, the decision was therefore already taken to dismantle the Arecibo radio telescope.

With the collapse, the radio telescope, which was built in the 1960s to investigate the ionosphere, comes to a sad end. Soon after, the telescope was used for more purposes. For example, the telescope helped provide the first evidence for neutron stars and binary pulsars. Arecibo also played a major role in searches for extraterrestrial life, listening to radio signals from space as part of the SETI-project. Conversely, in 1974 the ‘Arecibo report‘thrown into space: a 1679-bit message that represents, among other things, the telescope, DNA and a human.

Due to its function and striking appearance, the telescope has appeared in several Hollywood productions: the James Bond film Goldeneye, Cosmos, Contact, X-Files and Species. The game Battlefield 4 also includes a map with a telescope inspired by Arecibo.