E07: Arecibo, a Tribute
December 25, 2020
Queen's Observatory
Season 1
Episode 8
In Space News:
- The Chinese Chang'e 5 lunar mission returned to Earth from the Moon on Dec 17 bringing back near 2kg of lunar material for examination. Read more about it here.
- Space X's starship SN8 exploded in a test on Dec 10th.
- In the 'great conjunction', Jupiter, Saturn, and Earth aligned visibly for the first time in 800 years.
On to the Arecibo observatory:
- The construction of Arecibo observatory in a natural sinkhole in Puerto Rico in 1960. It was proposed by physicist Willam E Gordon at Cornell University to study the ionosphere of the Earth.
- Unlike other radion telescopes, along with receiving radio signals fro the Universe, Arecibo has the capability of sending out a radio signal which has been very useful.
- Unfortunately due to various natural (most recently Hurricane Maria in Sept 2017) and financial strains, prevented regular, required maintenance.
- The lack of these required maintenances led to the snapping of cables that houses a 900-tonne structure with equipment. The timeline of the decommissioning:
- Some of the notable discoveries by Arecibo observatory are:
- Arecibo discovered that the rotation rate of mercury is 59 days to better understand the orbit of Mercury around the sun.
- Arecibo discovered the first every binary pulsar and studying it confirmed predictions of general relativity. This discovery won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1993.
- Arecibo's radar allowed it to send signals towards the Hercules star cluster in search of extraterrestrial intelligence.
- Arecibo observatory also discovered the first every exoplanet around a pulsar.
- More discoveries made using Arecibo can be found here.