Without the Arecibo telescope, our search for intelligent life is crippled

“The telescope is in danger of catastrophic failure,” the NSF wrote in a November statement. “Any attempt to repair could put workers in potentially fatal danger.” As such, the NSF announced Thursday that it will dismantle the painting before it can collapse on its own.

“Until these evaluations arrived, our question was not whether the observatory should be repaired, but how,” said Ralph Gaume, director of the astronomy division of the National Science Foundation. New York Times Thursday. “But at the end of the day, a preponderance of data showed that we just couldn’t do it safely.” It’s the end of an astronomical era and we’re all a little poorer for that.

In 1959, Cornell University contracted with ARPA to manage a gargantuan new radio telescope under construction in the karst foothills just outside of Arecibo, Puerto Rico. The following year, crews broke new ground when Cornell astronomer William E. Gordon oversaw the design and construction of the telescope, officially known as the National Center for Astronomy and Ionosphere (NAIC). Site management transferred in 2018 to the University of Central Florida, Yang Enterprises and UMET.

Completed in 1963, the Arecibo telescope was originally tasked with studying the ionosphere, one of Gordon’s specialties. However, the reasoning behind the construction of the telescope actually stemmed from an ARPA defense program that sought to create an early detection system for incoming nuclear missiles by spotting atmospheric ionization generated by the high speed friction of their flight. At the time, we did not have a very solid understanding of the Earth’s upper atmosphere, hence the need for a NAIC. The telescope was also used clandestinely to snoop around Soviet radar sites by detecting signals bouncing off the moon.

The Arecibo telescope was simply massive. Its main collection dish is over 1,000 meters in diameter and covered with almost 39,000 individual aluminum plates. With a total collection area of ​​73,000 square meters (about 20 square acres), the NAIC was the largest single-aperture telescope on the planet from the date of its completion in 1963 to 2016 when China completed its FAST telescope. The cables that broke were two of 18 cables between a trio of concrete support towers used to support a 900-ton receiver suspended nearly 500 feet above the antenna surface.

Its gigantic footprint enabled capabilities of the Arecibo telescope that small sites simply couldn’t match. As such, the competition to use the facility was brutal, requiring an impartial panel of three to allocate observation time only to the most promising research. Even with the strict admission policies, around 200 scientists have visited the telescope each year.

It has been used in a wide range of scientific studies – observing everything from Earth’s upper atmosphere and the sun’s heliophysics to rapid radio bursts and pulsar emissions. In fact, the first exoplanets ever discovered were discovered orbiting a pulsar, PSR 1257 + 12, using the Arecibo telescope. In addition, the Arecibo was at the origin of the first detection of gravitational waves created by pulsars. This discovery eventually won a Nobel in 1993. The telescope also provided invaluable assistance in the search for extraterrestrial life.

The first attempt took place on November 16, 1974 with what is known today as the Arecibo message. As part of a celebration marking the recent remodeling of the telescope, SETI researchers launched a radio signal – “the most powerful program ever to be deliberately broadcast in space,” according to DARPA – to the cluster. globular stars M13. He delivered a seven-part message designed by Cornell astronomer Frank Drake (as in Drake’s equation) and Carl Sagan. We have not yet received a response. The Arecibo telescope also generated the data that the SETI @ home project chewed up while the similar Edison @ Home program discovered nearly two dozen new pulsars in Arecibo’s data reams.

The telescope had experienced a number of difficulties over the past decades, including damage from Hurricane Maria in 2017 and unreliable funding. Still, the NSF’s decision came as a punch to the scientific community. “Think what the Golden Gate Bridge means to San Francisco, what the Statue of Liberty means to New Yorkers. Arecibo is this and more in Puerto Rico because he went beyond an icon, ”wrote Edgard Rivera-Valentín of the Lunar and Planetary Institute at National Geographic. “For some of us, it has become this goal to achieve, this symbol that we can achieve great things, this pride only in our own backyard; we served the entire planet. “

Others, like planetary scholar Ed Rivera-Valentín, responded to the news with fond memories of their experiences there:

Still others have taken a more pragmatic view of the situation. “I would say closing Arecibo is bad for SETI, but not disastrous,” Dr Christopher Conselice, professor of extragalactic astronomy at the University of Manchester, told Engadget. “It’s a very sensitive telescope for finding signals, but it’s not the only game in town anymore.”

“For example, the $ 100 million Breakthrough Listening project uses other telescopes, including Jodrell Bank in the UK and the Allen Network, but does not use Arecibo,” he continued. “However, since we don’t know if, how, or where a SETI signal would appear, the loss of Arecibo could potentially mean we miss detection.”

Although it will cease operations, the facility will not be demolished. Instead, only the 305-meter-high telescope will descend and this process has already started. The NSF is also using a fleet of HD camera drones to conduct photographic surveys of the area. There is no timeline for the end of the decommissioning yet.

“For nearly six decades, the Arecibo Observatory has served as a beacon for groundbreaking science and what partnering with a community can look like,” NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan said in a statement on Thursday. “While this is a profound change, we will be looking for ways to help the scientific community and maintain this strong relationship with the Puerto Rican people.”