This is the kind of thing I always hope that one of the billionaire nerds will help with. Seems right up Elon Musk's alley.
Maybe the state could take some of their spare money...
Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled
81–90 of 315 posts
Re: Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled
#82The thing was iconic... even if not everyone watching/playing Goldeneye knew it was a real radio telescope, it was nevertheless one of those science megaprojects that featured prominently in the popular zeitgeist and got more than one young kid excited about what's out there in the stars. But infrastructure ages, and 60 years isn't a bad run. What comes next? Clearly there's going to be a capabilities gap for a while…
> But infrastructure ages, and 60 years isn't a bad run. What comes next? Clearly there's going to be a capabilities gap for a while, but now that it's 60 years after its original design, what kind of design is going to replace it? Do we even need giant monolith dishes anymore? China already built one: https://phys.org/news/2016-07-china-world-largest-radio-tele... . Given that it's nonmilitary US government infrastr…
It wasn't nonmilitary, it's military use has just come to an end.
In a small sidenote of an absolutely magnificent lecture by Steve Blank, the Secret History of Silicon Valley [0], he notes that the reason the radio telescopes were built in the 60's was because the Soviets were using air defense radars in their interiors that were hard to get information on using other methods that were available, but a few times a month a very sensitive radio telescope would get a very good view of their emissions as they bounced off the moon.
This was the cause of the massive radio astronomy boom during the 60's that built all the western radio telescope megaprojects that have produced so much great scientific data.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo (radio telescope talk at 50m30s or so)
Re: Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled
#83The thing was iconic... even if not everyone watching/playing Goldeneye knew it was a real radio telescope, it was nevertheless one of those science megaprojects that featured prominently in the popular zeitgeist and got more than one young kid excited about what's out there in the stars. But infrastructure ages, and 60 years isn't a bad run. What comes next? Clearly there's going to be a capabilities gap for a while…
> But infrastructure ages, and 60 years isn't a bad run.
Infrastructure can also be maintained and last longer than this, which is why I'm personally sad. Had Arecibo always had the ~60 year timeline, it would've been a bittersweet retirement, like Voyager. In this case I just feel like it's gone before it should. Arecibo has been receiving reduced funding since the early 2000s [1].
The end of an era, although thankfully not of science mega-projects. There's still plenty of cool ones operating or under construction.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_Observatory#Funding_co...
Re: Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled
#84The thing was iconic... even if not everyone watching/playing Goldeneye knew it was a real radio telescope, it was nevertheless one of those science megaprojects that featured prominently in the popular zeitgeist and got more than one young kid excited about what's out there in the stars. But infrastructure ages, and 60 years isn't a bad run. What comes next? Clearly there's going to be a capabilities gap for a while…
It's been a little while since I dabbled in radio astronomy, but arrays like the VLA use interferometry to produce high resolution images. However, the high resolution is only along the directions between pairs of telescopes. Since you don't have telescopes in all directions, there are some directions with low resolution and others with high resolution. (In the technical parlance they talk about "UV-coverage" and filling the UV plane".) This produces patterns in the Fourier domain that look like this: http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~vlbacald/idx/snap_uv.gif. [1]
As the object moves in the sky, these dots move around and sort of "fill out" the image in Fourier space, so you get coverage that could look like this: http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~vlbacald/idx/lowd_uv.gif but it's still not 100% full.
The advantage of a telescope that is a single large dish like Arecibo is that this plane is completely filled. The resolution is more or less the same in all directions. The main disadvantage, of course, is that it is embedded in the ground and can only look at what is directly overhead. (They can maneuver the secondary dish to look at things a little bit away from directly overhead, but I seem to remember it only being a few degrees.)
[1]: See this page for those images and more details: http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~vlbacald/read.shtml
Re: Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
I loved seeing Arecibo when I last visited PR. It is sad to see it dismantled -- I wonder what plans, if any, there are to replace its capabilities.
FAST is now online, newer and larger.
It seems FAST isn't a complete substitute for Arecibo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-hundred-meter_Aperture_Sp...
Re: Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled
#86The thing was iconic... even if not everyone watching/playing Goldeneye knew it was a real radio telescope, it was nevertheless one of those science megaprojects that featured prominently in the popular zeitgeist and got more than one young kid excited about what's out there in the stars. But infrastructure ages, and 60 years isn't a bad run. What comes next? Clearly there's going to be a capabilities gap for a while…
> What comes next?
The Square Kilometre Array
Re: Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled
#87Is this a symbol of the degradation of human intellectual capability in the 21st century?
> Is this a symbol of the degradation of human intellectual capability in the 21st century? No, it's a symbol of the degradation of US political capability in the 21st century. To be more explicit: why build a telescope like this if you axiomatically believe the free market will do everything worth doing and that the government projects are waste by definition? There was a time when those ideas weren't so dominant, a…
It turns out the free market is extremely good at innovation, but horrible for maintenance or long lived projects - as soon as something is not deemed "profitable" any more, it gets shut down. No matter how useful it is for literally millions of people (Google Reader comes to a mind).
Re: Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled
#88This is horrible. Arecibo is still crucial in radio astronomy experiments ongoing as of 2019. It should be repaired, until a replacement is built.
Whose money are you volunteering to be spent on that?
I don’t get the flagging, it’s a very valid question.
I’m sure the people at PR would rather see the money invested on infrastructure with higher impact on their citizens life.
Re: Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled
#89The thing was iconic... even if not everyone watching/playing Goldeneye knew it was a real radio telescope, it was nevertheless one of those science megaprojects that featured prominently in the popular zeitgeist and got more than one young kid excited about what's out there in the stars. But infrastructure ages, and 60 years isn't a bad run. What comes next? Clearly there's going to be a capabilities gap for a while…
> What comes next? The Square Kilometre Array
That the US (as of April 2020) does not take any part in.
Re: Arecibo telescope, on the brink of collapse, will be dismantled
#90Is this a symbol of the degradation of human intellectual capability in the 21st century?
No, we already have the FAST telescope. It is more a degradation of US infrastructure.