Building a giant radio telescope in the middle of a sinkhole. What could possibly go wrong?
In the early 1960’s, what began as a Cold War era project by the US government to detect nuclear missiles morphed into a giant radio telescope built into a natural sinkhole in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. For the next fifty years, the Arecibo telescope scanned the skies for objects in deep space and signs of extraterrestrial intelligent life as the world’s largest single aperture radio telescope. The site was even used for the ending fight scene in the 1995 James Bond movie GoldenEye.
However, the structure supporting the telescope began to fall into disrepair in the late 2010’s, with damage from 2017’s Hurricane Maria and two subsequent earthquakes leaving the rig in perilous shape. Though it was already decided in November 2020 that the telescope would be decommissioned and torn apart, nature did the job for humans on December 1, 2020…
Oh well, back to the drawing board, as they say….
And speaking of the drawing board, let’s use it to answer this week’s Share Your World questions from Di!
Actual images from the Arecibo Radio Telesc…. errrr, maybe not.
Do you have any family traditions?
Not in the sense that this question is asking. But there were annual things we did throughout the year when I was young since we were poor to break the monotony. There was the yearly trip to Six Flags, usually made by scrounging up as many empty cans of Coke we could find to get the discounted price (And of course, me and my sisters were always 12 and under, even when we weren’t). Vacations consisted of every-other-year trips to that tourist hot spot Paducah, Kentucky, which was about 150 miles southeast of where we lived. Fun times, indeed….
Made even more fun by backwards facing station wagon seats…
With December on its way, have you ever been carol singing?
Do you decorate your home for the Christmas holidays?
No, but I can occasionally seasonally decorate a Shelf Critter Theatre scene….
Well, if that doesn’t make things look merry and bright…
Do you enjoy the Christmas rush for preparations and shopping?
If you’re talking about watching others do that kind of stuff at work….. well, kind of. But only when the big fights break out…
Good thing my box cutter is always sharp….
Gratitude Section Retro Comic:
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
I got to see Aricebo before it fell apart and was demolished….impressive but a little weird. I should imagine carrying a box cutter is a comfort during the Christmas rush at Mecca.
Pam
Definitely weird. I had never heard of that telescope before, but it just seemed to be asking to get ruined eventually. It seems like a good place to put a pile of Black Friday items and watch the silly customers run towards their demise….
we haven’t seen fights during the last years… hmmm…. we always missed a thing about christmess… think that was it….
I’ve seen Arecibo in some movies and was sorry to see it go. I’ve never been caroling except in church but of course I decorate for Christmas. It’s all in my name!
LOL, yes, it is in your name!
Thanks for joining in. The collapse was quite spectacular.
Pretty amazing, and a good thing nobody was around when it happened…
I knew that supervillain lair looked too cheap when I bought it. “Barely used” they said. “Structurally sound” they said.
You can’t trust anyone these days.
The evil supervillain real estate agent is a sneaky one, always selling properties with one fatal flaw….
The Arecibo collapse video was pretty remarkable. The demise must have been foreseen, how else can you have a drone on standby to capture the footage? 😉
The drone was apparently surveying conditions for the eventual planned demolition and just happened to catch the real thing! or maybe that’s what they want us to think…..
Wow, now THAT was quite the coincidence! Not that I’m cynical, mind you.