Telescope operator Ángel Vázquez sent the first damage reports via short-wave radio on September 21. It’s not clear how the recent damage will affect its future. Ten years after that story ran in the Cornell Daily Sun, Arecibo’s funding situation is still in doubt. (I never did, but my undergrad adviser, Martha Haynes, uses Arecibo to study the distribution of galaxies in the local universe.) And one of the first science stories I ever had published was about Cornell professors testifying to the National Science Foundation, which owns Arecibo, to defend the observatory’s funding. I chose to go to Cornell University for undergrad in part because the university managed Arecibo at the time, and I hoped I might get to go there. It was also the telescope that, in 1992, discovered the first planets outside the solar system.Īrecibo also holds a special place in my personal history: Watching actress Jodie Foster use the giant dish to listen for aliens in the movie Contact when I was 13 cemented my desire to study astronomy. It played a key role in the history of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence: In 1974, astronomers Frank Drake, Jill Tarter and Carl Sagan used it to send messages to any extraterrestrial civilizations that might be listening ( SN Online: 2/13/15). “#AreciboScience is coming back after #MariaPR.”īut the direct whack still raises the issue of when – and even whether – to repair the observatory: Funding for it has repeatedly been on the chopping block despite its historic contributions to astronomy.Īrecibo’s recent work includes searching for gravitational waves by the effect they have on the clocklike regularity of dead stars called pulsars watching for mysterious blasts of energy called fast radio bursts ( SN Online: 12/21/16) and keeping tabs on near-Earth asteroids. The observatory is conserving fuel, but plans to resume limited astronomy observations September 29, deputy director Joan Schmelz tweeted earlier that day. As news trickled out over the past week, it appeared that the damage may not be as bad as initially reported.
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