![]() The proposal came with a price tag of $454 million, a hefty load for the NSF, which is also fielding requests to invest billions in gravitational wave detectors, a pair of giant optical ground-based telescopes and other ambitious projects that would help American researchers keep pace with the rest of the world. But the moral debt to Puerto Rico reigns supreme. team would be high and dry, in a desert, rather than in the stormy and humid mountains of Puerto Rico. Radio astronomers concede that, in the best of all possible worlds, the best site for a telescope like the one proposed by the N.G.A.T. “These capabilities will vastly increase the user base of the facility and enable cutting-edge science for decades to come,” the authors, led by Anish Roshi, a senior scientist at the Arecibo Observatory, wrote in their proposal. It also joined a new planetary defense initiative by NASA, tracking and bouncing radar off potential killer asteroids. The telescope helped radio astronomers win a Nobel Prize in Physics for their observations of a pair of pulsars emitting gravitational waves, the ripples in space-time that had been predicted by Einstein. ![]() ![]() It appeared in the film “Contact,” which features Jodie Foster as an astronomer who discovers a communication signal from outer space, and in “Goldeneye,” as the lair of a James Bond supervillain. Over the years it stood as a symbol of human curiosity and cosmic optimism. The Arecibo Observatory, officially named the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, was originally built as an interplanetary radar as well as a radio telescope to study, among other things, the properties of objects such as warheads tumbling through the atmosphere. The Arecibo Center for STEM Education and Research would include the Ángel Ramos Science and Visitor Center, as well as an exhibition space, a laboratory, an office space, dormitories, an auditorium and a cafeteria.Ī headline in The Register, a daily online journal covering technology, complained that the National Science Foundation planned to replace the telescope with a school. Last week the National Science Foundation, which owns the Arecibo Observatory, said it would spend $5 million to establish a world-class educational center at the site. Many grew up to be astronomers themselves. There, young students could rub elbows with renowned scientists at work and be inspired by science, particularly astronomy. Since 1963, when the telescope was founded, generations of schoolchildren in the territory have trooped through the hills to a sci-fi setting: a gigantic, concave antenna, set like a mixing bowl in a mountain valley, with 900 tons of radio receivers suspended above it. The demise of Arecibo also punched a hole in the pride and the economy of Puerto Rico, which has repeatedly been hit by hurricanes, earthquakes and widespread electrical outages. ![]() One thousand feet wide, it listened to radio signals from the stars - as well as from pulsars, planets, asteroids and more - for any hints of intelligent life, potentially Earth-killing objects and insights into the mysteries of gravity and space-time. When the giant Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico collapsed in December 2020, it punched a hole in astronomy.įor half a century Arecibo was the mightiest telescope on the planet.
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