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Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

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Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#201

Post by est31 »

_Microft wrote: post #197
ssivark wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Official report from the NSF: https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=301737

Very cool, that matches it. According to Wolfram Alpha, 7:55 a.m. Atlantic Standard Time is 11:55 UTC.

There is a small difference of 3 minutes, but the NSF wording has an "approximately". I guess their priority was to get an initial report out and not precisely determine when it collapsed. I think that a final report on the incident will contain the 12:52 figure instead of the 12:55 one.

Anyways, that's just splitting hairs. Glad that nobody got hurt. This incident is obviously a tragedy.

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#202

Post by hedora »

nickff wrote: post #152
hedora wrote: post #107

"I look forward to the day when the schools automatically receive the funds they need and the Pentagon holds bake sales to buy tanks." - Terry Herndon

A lot more money is spent on education than on the military in the USA (where education is funded by three levels of government), and most other countries.

US education spending is about 20-30% more than military spending, but the money is not well-allocated.

Most funding is from local taxes, which vary greatly from school to school, and sometimes from year to year.

https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year_spending_2021USbn_...

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#203

Post by dang »

Previous threads of this story:

12 days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25151342

21 days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25045573

3 months ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24149346

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24129199

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24128877

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#204

Post by dang »

We changed the URL from https://twitter.com/DeborahTiempo/status/1333741751069192195 to an article with more background info, albeit mostly from Twitter.

Other sources (via https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...):

https://www.npr.org/2020/12/01/940767001/arecibo-observatory...

https://twitter.com/ProfAbelMendez/status/133380715605177548...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/01/science/space/arecibo-tel...

https://apnews.com/article/technology-arecibo-observatory-pu...

https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/1/21754959/arecibo-observat...

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#205

Post by hedora »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #183
jdofaz wrote: post #180

2020 keeps on giving...

OK, things are starting to make sense. It's an alien attack. They created Covid to distract us enough that we wouldn't defend Arecibo. And they're driving Trump insane with their mind control rays just to increase the chaos. /s, in case anyone couldn't tell...

Too soon on the mind control ray thing. The Russians are allegedly microwaving the brains of CIA agents and their families, and the intelligence community is waiting until Trump is gone to mount a response.

Citation (and perhaps tin foil hat) obviously required: https://www.gq.com/story/cia-investigation-and-russian-micro...

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#206

Post by ardy42 »

ethbr0 wrote: post #65
javajosh wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The first answer is ICBMs are, now a days, mostly an IR optical thing. Source? This seems unlikely since ground-based visual tracking would be obscured by e.g. clouds. Is ICBM tracking all space-based and visual? (I can see why IR is useful to detect the initial boost, but it would also seem rather useless to track a small, passive object in freefall).

> small, passive object in freefall That's probably anomalously hot as it plows back through the atmosphere. I think radar stealth coatings are sufficiently advanced that they swung the balance back in favor of IR for tracking purposes. Historically: it was hard / unknown how to make a flying object that resisted reflecting radar Current: it's hard / unknown how to make a flying object that's resistant to radiating h…

> Current: it's hard / unknown how to make a flying object that's resistant to radiating heat

There are techniques to reduce infrared signature, though:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-2_Spirit#In...

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#207

Post by nickff »

AlexandrB wrote: post #196
skuhn wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem (partly) is that the F-35 program puts money into 307 congressional districts in 45 states [1]. These insanely expensive defense projects are wealth transfer programs that make contractors like Lockheed and their many sub-contractors rich, and also create jobs in these communities. That a fighter plane may or may not come out the other end is only nominally important, the key is to spend the money. The mo…

The F-35 is an example of the broken window parable[1] writ large. Sure it created a bunch of jobs, but that same money could have created a similar number of jobs while accomplishing something useful. I often wonder what the eventual consequences of this kind of resource misallocation will be for the US. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

Well, many influential economists don't believe in the broken windows fallacy, or that it applies here. Joseph Stiglitz has said that he was in favor of literally paying people to dig holes then fill them back up as a form of fiscal stimulus.

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#208

Post by dheera »

est31 wrote: post #88

I've wondered about the exact time of the collapse. Apparently there is a seismic observatory only tens of meters away from the telescope dish. The station code is AOPR [0]. After retrieving the mseed data from the web API using curl, and installing obspy from pip, I could plot the events. This is the result: [1]. You can see two "events". One at Nov 30, 23:12 UTC, and a second, larger one at Dec 1st, 11:52 UTC. Upon…

Stupid question: Why do they decommission it instead of fixing it? It seems that it would be more work to build a new one.

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#209

Post by piannucci »

est31 wrote: post #88

I've wondered about the exact time of the collapse. Apparently there is a seismic observatory only tens of meters away from the telescope dish. The station code is AOPR [0]. After retrieving the mseed data from the web API using curl, and installing obspy from pip, I could plot the events. This is the result: [1]. You can see two "events". One at Nov 30, 23:12 UTC, and a second, larger one at Dec 1st, 11:52 UTC. Upon…

Whoa, cool. Could you make a .wav file or something so we can hear it?

Re: Arecibo Observatory Collapsed

#210

Post by me_me_me »

skuhn wrote: post #38
m000 wrote: post #16

"Too big to fail" apparently doesn't apply for science projects. To put this in perspective, at the cost of a single F-35A, Arecibo could be running for ~7y with funding at 2011 levels.

The problem (partly) is that the F-35 program puts money into 307 congressional districts in 45 states [1]. These insanely expensive defense projects are wealth transfer programs that make contractors like Lockheed and their many sub-contractors rich, and also create jobs in these communities. That a fighter plane may or may not come out the other end is only nominally important, the key is to spend the money. The mo…

That money would be better spent building roads etc, fuck just give it for free to the worker. Some would end up running local businesses instead of stuffing offshore accounts.
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