The radio telescope at Arecibo was once the largest single-aperture telescopes in the world, at 305m/1000ft across. During its lifetime it was surpassed by the 500m aperture spherical telescope (FAST) in Guizhou, China, which is still in use. Interferometry makes "virtual" large-aperture radio telescopes possible by combining inputs from separate radio telescopes. Such as the Very Large Array (US), VLTI, and ALMA, and the planned Square Kilometre Array.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_Kilometre_Array https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_telescope https://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/technology/interferometry/
first rule of austerity politics: why spend money to have something, when you can choose not to spend the money and then not have the thing.
I used to be close to an astrophysicist. This is a huge loss.
Capitalism drives innovation.
(Seriously I know it's considered bougie to care about "traditional" arts and sciences but this fills me with a cold rage. There is no other dish like this on the planet.)
I know it’s considered bougie to care about “traditional” arts and sciences
wat
Yeah that was a dumb statement said under too much alcohol. AES states have been huge supporters of the arts.
I think it was just some of the discourse around the Van Gough has mad me a bit butthurt.
bougie to care about “traditional” arts and sciences but this fills me with a cold rage
dirtbag leftism was a mistake
My brother in Christ, soviets put the first man in space! :curry-space:
Yes, and we've also figured out how to mimic the benefits of having a very large telescope by using multiple smaller telescopes that are far apart.
...but why not have two instead of one?
"The US decides not to rebuild Puerto Rico" is a better way of saying how they treat their Caribbean colony
The government had already decided to close the telescope. It collapsed afterwards. It was decrepit and had been falling apart for a long time. It hasn't had a real scientific use since the the 70s and 80s.
It has scientific use, as the post says, with radio astronomy, you can combine the input of multiple antennas to do very long baseline measurements for large arrays. And there are several current experiments and collaborations trying to combine inputs from antennas across the world for extremely long baseline measurements. the direct images of black holes that have been coming out are due to one of these collaborations. You could argue that the upkeep and repairs weren't worth it compared to some other project being funded, but specifically having a really large and good antenna operating distant from any other arrays would be very useful. For some of these larger baseline experiments placement on the globe really matters, which is why SKA and several other new arrays are being built in Africa. I think if starting from scratch and could place it anywhere there would be better locations, but having something in the Eastern Caribbean would be very useful.
Edit: But everyone saw this coming and had already written this off, so most Astrophysicists and Astronomers aren't surprised or too upset about this, AFAIK.
In popular culture
The Arecibo Observatory appeared in many novels, series and films, such as in the X-Files of Season 2 Episode 1 "Little Green Men", in James Bond GoldenEye and Carl Sagan's novel and related movie Contact.
This is what we all expected the day it went down. I mean, I'd go as far as to say it was bound to happen since Maria. Neither the local gov nor the federal gov were going to repair it.
