RIP Aricebo

[Mike]

The Aricebo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico collapsed today. It had been damaged already during Hurricane Maria in 2017. Then earthquakes made it worse. One support cable snapped in August and then another in November. Then today, the whole telescope came down, as the receiver tower crashed down into the dish below.

It looks like they'll be shuttering the entire observatory after 60 years of service.

[Tahlvin]

Tragic.

[Mike]

Yeah... until a year ago, it was the largest radio telescope in the world

[Phoebe]

So sad! And especially with everything else Puerto Rico has been through this year.

[Mike]

There's a great episode of the podcast Shortwave talking about Aricebo. They just replayed it last week, before this happened. It features a Puerto Rican astronomer who talks about the importance of Aricebo to him and how as a kid he grew up with the largest radio telescope in the world literally in his back yard. How inspired he was to think that all this important work was being done right there in Puerto Rico. It was all very touching.

I don't know how much money it would have taken to rectify this, but when the administration wasn't even bothering to help restore power to the island, they probably didn't have the infrastructure to launch any kind of repair project. It's a shame.

[Phoebe]

I was wondering this too and apparently it was beyond help, because at any moment they were waiting for this to happen and it would have been too dangerous for anyone to embark upon the repairs. I just got this from one random article so I don't know if it's the full story.
Most likely the aliens discovered we had this telescope, observe for a while and then just decided to fly by and snap that cable so that we would be set back until they could deal with us in their own way. I guess they're now putting obelisks down.