I just watch the movie Contact this past weekend. Love that telescope and the movie.
I watch that at least once a year with my wife. It'll feel strange from now on. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself... and for that we need telescopes!
Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled
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Re: Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled
#42Is this a symbol of the degradation of human intellectual capability in the 21st century?
Not really since the installation has been mostly a tourist destination for years. This happens to be a piece of scientific infrastructure that a lot of people recognize from movies, video games, etc but it’s not actually very important.
Re: Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled
#43Re: Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled
#44Fuuuuuuuck. I understand the decision to dismantle the failing structure which is currently unsafe and tricky to repair. But might a new one be built in its place? How can we push for that?
By paying for it? It has been struggling with financing for a long time.
Re: Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled
#45I cannot believe they are shutting it down over a broken cable.
That is hardly the summary.
The "broken cable" is the last in a serious of maintenance issues that have gone unaddressed and piled up into making it impractical to repair at this point.
Re: Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled
#46Is this a symbol of the degradation of human intellectual capability in the 21st century?
It’s yet another symbol that we waste resources. Military and pork spending far outweigh the costs of things that could instead improve out quality of life (health) and the understanding of our universe.
It’s outdated technology. We are still spending hundreds of billions on basic science, including space science.
Re: Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled
#47Fuuuuuuuck. I understand the decision to dismantle the failing structure which is currently unsafe and tricky to repair. But might a new one be built in its place? How can we push for that?
Or maybe use all that money to build a good one on the Moon.
They've seriously struggled to find a few million per year just to keep the thing running and do the bare minimum of maintenance (or perhaps less than the bare minimum). I think they'd be hard pressed to scrounge up the billions of dollars they'd need to put a new one on the moon
Re: Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled
#48This is the kind of thing I always hope that one of the billionaire nerds will help with. Seems right up Elon Musk's alley.
Right, because that worked out so well for Notre Dame last year, eh?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/18/ruins-...
Re: Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled
#49For England James?
Re: Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled
#50Is the same money (replacement cost) better spent on a space-based solution?
This sort of a telescope structure fundamentally depends on gravity to naturally pull it into the required paraboloid shape. There's absolutely no way you could do anything remotely similar in space with current or near-future technology. And even if you could, that money would buy you dozens or hundreds of Earthbound Arecibos.