SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submission Preview
Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico Collapses Weeks After Suffering Major Damage
████ # This file was generated bot-o-matically! Edit at your own risk. ████
Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico Collapses Weeks After Suffering Major Damage [weather.com]:
The renowned Arecibo Observatory radio telescope in Puerto Rico, closed because of damage, completely collapsed Tuesday morning.
"Friends, it is with deep regret to inform you that the Arecibo Observatory platform has just collapsed," tweeted Deborah Martorell, a senior meteorologist for WAPA-TV and El Nuevo Dia in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Martorell, who was at the observatory on Monday, received a call from a scientist at the site Tuesday saying the giant reflector dish and the Gregorian Dome that held instruments above it had both collapsed [elnuevodia.com], El Nuevo Dia reported.
The Associated Press also reported the collapse and said many scientists and Puerto Ricans mourned the news, with some tearing up during interviews.
In August, an auxiliary cable snapped, ripping a 100-foot gash on the reflector dish [weather.com], which is 1,000 feet in diameter. Officials shut down the observatory temporarily.
Then, early last month, a main cable broke [weather.com]. That led the National Science Foundation to declare it planned to close the radio telescope because the damage was too great. The observatory had been operating for more than 50 years.
Battered for decades by hurricanes, storms and earthquakes, the cable breaks were the latest blow to one of the world's most powerful radio telescopes. It was closed for several months after Hurricane Maria in 2017 [space.com], according to space.com. And earlier this year, the telescope shut down in January and part of February because of a series of earthquakes that hit Puerto Rico.
Arecibo was used for scientific research and to track asteroids close to Earth. But it's probably best known for a message that was beamed from the telescope to the far reaches of the Milky Way in 1974 as part of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, program.
The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.
