When you purchase through tie-in on our site , we may realise an affiliate committee . Here ’s how it works .
TheArecibo Observatory — a giant scope in Puerto Rico famous for scouring the cosmos forasteroidsand alien life — went muted this week , following a crushing fortuity that pull up stakes the scope ’s reflector dish in pieces .
On Monday ( Aug. 10 ) at close to 2:45 a.m. local time , a alloy cable at the adroitness snapped , slashing through the radar dish and shoot down open a 100 - infantry - long ( 30 meter ) jam , according to astatementfrom the University of Central Florida , which execute the National Science Foundation - owned facility . The snapped overseas telegram also nail through several other cables and platforms that support the peach , causing dust to rain down on the land below and making it intemperately for technicians to get at the site .
Arecibo Observatory’s main collecting dish, which is among the world’s largest single-dish radio telescopes, was badly damaged when a cable snapped on Monday, Aug. 10.
" We have a squad of expert assessing the office , " Francisco Cordova , the director of the observatory , said in the statement . " Our focus is insure the safety of our staff , protect the facilities and equipment , and restoring the quickness to full operations as shortly as potential , so it can continue to attend scientists around the globe . "
Related:9 strange , scientific excuses for why humans have n’t found alien yet
Arecibo set out operating in 1963 from the bottom of a instinctive sinkhole in Puerto Rico . At the time of its completion , Arecibo was the world ’s largest unmarried - dish scope , stretch 1,000 infantry ( 305 m ) in diam . While you may not recognise the telescope by name , you might know it by visual sense , thanks to the 1997 movie " Contact . " That moving-picture show ’s protagonist is an astronomer working at Arecibo , who hopes to make first contact with extraterrestrial intelligence . ( The lookout station ’s gargantuan reflector dish alsostole the showat the end of the 1995 James Bond flick , " GoldenEye . " )
— Greetings , Earthlings ! 8 ways aliens might contact us
— From Big Bang to present : shot of our cosmos through prison term
— 13 manner to hunt intelligent aliens
Though we ’re still waitress for that epical first DM from aliens , Arecibo has played a central role in the lookup for extraterrestrial intelligence ( SETI ) since the seventies . In 1974 , astronomers used the radio receiver telescope to transmit a binary code toward a dim clump of stars 25,000light - yearsaway , hoping the message might get pick up by another technologically - advanced civilization . ( It was n’t ) .
SETI experiments have rest a primal part of the observation tower ’s agenda — and so has planetary defense . Arecibo ’s Planetary Radar Project , part ofNASA ’s Planetary Defense program , is responsible for for detecting and analyze near - Earthobjects , such as asteroids , that could pose a menace to our planet .
That project , along with all other Arecibo projects , has been suspended due to the damage . But Arecibo has bounce back from damage before , including the fallout fromearthquakesand Hurricane Maria , and this accident will hopefully be no exception . Still … it would be a stinking time for the foreigner to in conclusion regress our call .
Originally publish on Live Science .
