Arecibo Observatory has been damaged

[munlander1]

A cable has snapped at 2:45am on 8/10/20 which resulted in a 100ft hole in the dish. The cause of the failure is currently unknown.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/9358be/a-broken-cable-has-wrecked-one-of-earths-largest-radio-telescopes

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sciencealert.com/a-broken-cable-smashed-a-huge-hole-in-the-arecibo-observatory/amp

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.slashgear.com/massive-arecibo-radio-telescope-suffers-more-damage-from-cable-incident-11633036/amp/

[Just Jim]

[RealKerbal3x]

Noooo!

It's the aliens! They don't want us to find them!

Edited August 12, 2020 by RealKerbal3x

[kerbiloid]

We got them with SETI spam.

(And we even haven't started with the interstellar online casino.)

Edited August 12, 2020 by kerbiloid

[tater]

 

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

  

If these short cylinders are forest stumps, this might be a revenge of Fangorn (the tree trunk to the left)

Spoiler

 

 

[munlander1]

25 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

If these short cylinders are forest stumps

They appear to be concrete cable anchors to me

[Gargamel]

Bit of the damage, and a bit of the History.  

EDIT:  I did not know that the Radar is not limited by the power of it's transmitter, but by how long it can keep a target in it's sights.   Still, 10 AU is pretty dang good.

Edited August 13, 2020 by Gargamel

[Silavite]

I wonder if it's still power limited at 12 light hours (86.6 AU)? The Earth's rotation would return it to roughly the same point in the sky. I dunno what you'd want to look at so far away, though... trans-Neptunian objects, maybe?

[FleshJeb]

This is Pierce Brosnan's fault.

[Minmus Taster]

2020 Cannot get worse...it's worse...

[YNM]

Holy.

 

Would this be even more pretext for them to just abandon the whole thing ? God I hope they'd actually repair it...

[Moach]

So, that's where Alec Trevelian went "splat" after our little showdown up there 

Couldn't see the ground with all that 64-bit fog...   And I was in a bit of a hurry too, gotta get him in 2:30 mins for the Gold PP7

 

 

Since it's a radio telescope, the hole in the dish by itself shouldn't really be too much trouble to repair (it's not like an optical's super-fine mirror) -- though that gash on the dome thingy looks like it's gonna be a pain in the ass to put back in order....

 

 

Edited August 21, 2020 by Moach

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, Moach said:

Since it's a radio telescope, the hole in the dish by itself shouldn't really be too much trouble to repair (it's not like an optical's super-fine mirror) -- though that gash on the dome thingy looks like it's gonna be a pain in the ass to put back in order....

Yes, looks like its an mesh structure with some sort of metal screen overlay.
Main issue is probably that you have to special order this.