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In a corner of his laboratory, Professor Abel Méndez, director of the Planetary Skills Laboratory of the University of Puerto Rico, preserves one of his most cherished memories about the Arecibo radio telescope, which was, for more than 50 years, the most biggest in the world. On simple sheets posted on the wall, you can see the schedule that astronomers and scientists from around the world were assigned to spend between two and four hours using the radio telescope and listening to the universe. His initials – Méndez shows – are there: AM.
Obsessed with exploring habitability on other planets or exoplanets, since 2017 the professor frequently went to the Arecibo Observatory, about 30 minutes by car from the University, to focus on the stars. “There are very active stars, like red dwarfs, and others like the Sun, which could be said to be rather quiet,” he comments. “What I used the radio telescope for was to observe which are the most stable stars because, around them, it is more likely that planets with a more habitable atmosphere exist,” he adds. Arecibo, in some way, allowed him to know what to prioritize in his investigation.
Until, on December 1, 2020, the radio telescope collapsed.
In Puerto Rico, and among the scientific community, everyone seems to remember how they found out about the fall of the giant telescope, which had a 300-meter spherical reflector dish, only surpassed in 2016 by China’s Fast, 500 meters. “I was at my house and, although I wasn’t surprised, I was silent for about two minutes,” Méndez recalls. “The press called me and I didn’t want to go on air or go see what had happened up close.”
Gladys Serrano
Professor Ángel Acosta, physicist and geologist, who used the radio telescope data to teach and do scientific communication, found out through the media. “To this day I have not been able to finish watching the video of the collapse,” he says, referring to a series of images that were recorded with a drone of the moment when the Gregorian reflector of the radio telescope fell on the platform.
Luisa Fernanda Zambrano, a Colombian planetary scientist who has worked with the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico since 2013, observing and characterizing asteroids, remembers that day with pain: “I cried, my team cried, we were all crying,” she says from her office in the United States. United States, where he works with the Florida Space Institute of the University of Central Florida.
But, beyond the tragedy, Arecibo left an unimaginable scientific legacy. For example, in 1965, he revealed that Mercury’s rotation lasts 59 days; in 1974, he discovered the first binary pulsar, which led physicists Russel Hulse and Joseph Taylor to win a Nobel Prize; In 1981, he produced the first map of the surface of Venus, and in 1992 he identified the first exoplanet. Over the years, it became known thanks to him that there were asteroids that passed in pairs or trios. In November 1974, furthermore, and thanks to the fact that Arecibo not only listened to the Universe, but also had a radar that allowed it to emit signals—the most powerful in the world—he sent the first message into space. It was information about our Solar System, the Earth and the human being that went to a star cluster, called M13, which is at a distance of 25,000 light years.
But Arecibo also crept into popular culture. He appeared in the films Golden Eye, Contact and Species. “It was a tourist place and a mandatory stop for scientists from the island or coming to the island,” says Acosta. In 2023, when there were only ruins of the telescope, Ashley Ann Cariño represented Puerto Rico in Miss Universe with a typical costume in tribute to Arecibo. It was an allusion to nostalgia, to how the island had lost one of the most captivating and powerful instruments for listening to space.
Zambrano, passionate about asteroids and part of the NASA program that used the radio telescope to characterize which ones could be a danger to Earth, is still working with the observations she made with Arecibo. “The data taken with this telescope continue to be processed, because they are an enormous legacy that it left us,” she says. She recognizes that in part she left Puerto Rico because her work instrument ceased to exist and, without Arecibo, the possibilities of continuing with a good salary were low.
What comes after the collapse
Telling the fall of Arecibo is a scientific horror story. The radio telescope had just survived Hurricane María in 2017 and the earthquake in January 2020, when an auxiliary cable broke in August of that same year. All observations stopped while another cable was brought from the United States to be repaired. But in November, just months later, a main cable came loose and the entire observatory was evacuated. In December, the radio telescope collapsed and, despite a strong campaign to have the National Science Foundation (NSF) to repair it, a forensic study indicated that it was not viable. In August 2023, all facilities closed and it was learned that the NSF opened a call for projects that wanted to use the space.
The project that was chosen was Arecibo C3, an initiative that hopes to open its doors throughout June of this year through a pilot. There is still some mystery about what they did in there. “The new Arecibo Center for culturally relevant and inclusive science education, with computational skills and community participation (C3), will continue the Arecibo Observatory’s legacy of leadership within Puerto Rico and the STEM community through education, outreach and workforce development,” the NSF told América Futura in a brief statement.
That is, he will no longer dedicate himself to astronomy, but to various sciences. Méndez, however, believes that there will also be an emphasis on space sciences, since its executive director will be Puerto Rican astronomer Wanda Díaz Merced, known for converting data into audible sound, since she is blind.
There is expectation about what will happen. Arecibo is now surrounded by a certain enigma. Something that worries Méndez and other scientists is what will happen to the instruments that the Arecibo Observatory had that were not the fallen radio telescope. “In particular, we want to know what will happen with a 12-meter radio telescope that continues to allow important observations,” says Mendéz, also explaining that together with a group of scientists they asked the NSF to be able to enter to see its status and learn about its status. destination.
Although this question remains without a concrete answer, the NSF explained in a message to América Futura that a spectrometer and two photometers were sent to Culebra Island, also in Puerto Rico, to continue doing atmospheric research. “The Arecibo C3 team has access to the instrumentation that remains on the site and can choose to incorporate it into some science, technology, engineering and mathematics educational activities,” they say, guaranteeing that they will consider proposals to use them under a subsidy.
In Puerto Rico there is suspense and hope. But C3 won’t have it easy. What Arecibo left to the island, to science and to humanity, are shoes that are difficult to fill.
