Scientists want to build a new, very different Arecibo Telescope to replace fallen icon [View all]

[Judi Lynn]

By Meghan Bartels about 16 hours ago



Arecibo Observatory's cable-suspended science platform, as seen before damage accrued in 2020. (Image credit: UCF)

Arecibo Observatory's massive radio dish was many things to many people: pulsar finder, broadcaster to aliens, asteroid mapper, Bond villain's hidden satellite dish, Puerto Rican icon, birthplace of future scientists. Until seven months ago, that is, when gravity got the best of an engineering marvel that had endured everything thrown its way for decades and the entire platform crashed down.

Since that fateful day, plenty of eyes have turned to analyzing what went wrong, while many hands have gotten to work sorting through and cleaning up the wreckage. And the brains have been doing what brains do best: dreaming of what science might come next for the site. For one group of scientists with deep ties to Arecibo, that meant dreaming up an entirely new type of telescope: one that would fill the gap left by the iconic instrument, then go much further.

"I personally think that this was the first cut; this was done in the wake of the collapse just to show that there are viable options of continuing the legacy of fantastic science at the telescope," Tracy Becker, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio and co-author on a white paper describing the design, told Space.com.

"I don't think that this version has to necessarily be what a new, built version will look like," she added. "It could end up looking more like the original telescope, or it could look completely different from anything that we've imagined so far. The primary goal was to show that we could use that space and continue that legacy of really powerful science."

More:
https://www.space.com/arecibo-telescope-replacement-process-and-designs