Numlock News: November 17, 2020 • Arecibo, Universal, Iota
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By Walt Hickey Arecibo The iconic Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico has had a rough few weeks, and the enormous cables that are holding the largest single-dish radio telescope up are now slowly unraveling. The 1,000-foot dish is held up by cables that have been breaking and damaging the instrument: in August, a cable broke that tore a 100-foot hole in the reflector dish, and just last week, a cable designed to hold 1.2 million pounds snapped under just 624,000 pounds of weight, further damaging the dish. Some new cables are slated to arrive next month, but funding is unclear and time is literally running out, as the 900-ton platform is held up by a few cables and the damage requires
Numlock News: November 17, 2020 • Arecibo, Universal, Iota
Numlock News: November 17, 2020 • Arecibo…
Numlock News: November 17, 2020 • Arecibo, Universal, Iota
By Walt Hickey Arecibo The iconic Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico has had a rough few weeks, and the enormous cables that are holding the largest single-dish radio telescope up are now slowly unraveling. The 1,000-foot dish is held up by cables that have been breaking and damaging the instrument: in August, a cable broke that tore a 100-foot hole in the reflector dish, and just last week, a cable designed to hold 1.2 million pounds snapped under just 624,000 pounds of weight, further damaging the dish. Some new cables are slated to arrive next month, but funding is unclear and time is literally running out, as the 900-ton platform is held up by a few cables and the damage requires