Lead
On December 1, 2020, Wilson, the discoverer of China's largest radio telescope and Nobel Laureate in Physics, found a broken steel cable of a telescope after a routine inspection, which made Wilson and his team nervous.
After a series of inspections, they discovered even more worrying news, as the cable broke and hit the telescope's parabolic reflector, causing severe damage to the reflector.
This made Wilson and his team anxious because the telescope's parabolic reflector was an inverted parabolic made of 900 aluminum plates, which meant that if one aluminum plate was damaged, the entire reflector would lose its balance and collapse.
In fact, the collapse of the Arecibo telescope had already begun, but Wilson and his team never knew about it, because although they had a lot of research tasks to complete, they still hadn't forgotten our interstellar neighbors, so they used the Arecibo telescope as an important tool for countless studies.
The Arecibo telescope has been a huge contribution to scientific research in China and the United States, just like China's Sky Eye, which is reflected in the huge research results and a large number of movies full of cosmic pictures.
However, just as China's Tianyan finally collapsed, the Arecibo telescope ended its mission sadly after it collapsed, why did it fall?
First, the scenery is unlimited.
The story of the Arecibo telescope begins in 1963, when the National Science Foundation had just built a huge "alchemy furnace" in a desert in New Mexico.
The diameter of the Arecibo telescope reaches 305 meters, you know, the diameter of the Chinese Sky Eye is only 500 meters, which means that the diameter of the Arecibo telescope is 61% of the diameter of the Chinese Sky Eye.
When it was completed in 1963, it became the world's largest radio telescope, and as such it quickly had an impact on the world, both in astronomical research in the United States and in international cooperation.
Although the Arecibo telescope made headlines soon after it was built, its fame was not earned by the fact that it was just released, but by its successful research missions time and time again.
Since its completion, the Arecibo Telescope has been contributing to astronomical research in the United States, which is reflected in the fact that the Arecibo Telescope can accurately measure the radio radiation generated in deep space, and through these measurements, the Arecibo Telescope not only provides scientists with new observational data, but also provides scientists with a new perspective of observation.
It is precisely because of the excellent performance of the Arecibo telescope that it has helped scientists to carry out a large number of studies on planets, stars, galaxies and other celestial bodies, some of which have even aroused enthusiastic responses at the time.
For example, the Arecibo telescope helped scientists discover Mercury, the most unusual planet with its rotation period, which is actually the same as its rotation period, which is gradually increasing year by year, which makes it difficult for scientists to measure Mercury's rotation period.
In addition, the Arecibo telescope helped scientists discover the first pulsed binary star system, a binary star system consisting of a neutron star and an ordinary star, which is characterized by cyclic changes in the radio radiation radiated over time.
Scientists discovered pulsed binary star systems by observing a regular radio pulse that had just been discovered and was unanimously believed to come from radio radiation emitted by celestial bodies, but no one had studied this radio pulse in more depth.
This situation continued until the Arecibo telescope began to study the pulsed binary star system, and through the study, it was found that the original pulsed binary star system will change periodically with time, and this regularity is due to the trajectory of the pulsed binary star system, so the Arecibo telescope became the first astronomical telescope to discover the pulsed binary star system.
Second, there is no trace.
In addition, the Arecibo telescope has also discovered a large number of asteroids for scientists, and the discovery of these asteroids has not only helped scientists better understand the evolution of the solar system, but also helped scientists better predict the threat of asteroids to Earth.
In the process of discovering asteroids, scientists use the Arecibo telescope as a "defensive weapon", and observe the interaction between asteroids through radio telescopes, so as to more accurately predict the threat of asteroids to Earth.
The Arecibo telescope also provided important support to the U.S. space program, such as the Apollo program, which checked the landing sites of the Apollo spacecraft and provided important information to the astronauts to reach the lunar surface.
In addition, the Arecibo telescope also serves as a huge emitter, sending a number of signals to the universe, which are actually human greetings to the universe, and although scientists do not know whether these signals will be answered, scientists still hope to communicate with other intelligent beings in the universe in this way.
The Arecibo telescope never even gave up on the search for aliens, until 2015, in a movie called "Contact", in which the Arecibo telescope finally shines in the show for "dialing" aliens, a science fiction movie in which a group of scientists and aliens communicate and are established.
In this movie, the Arecibo telescope is a tool used by scientists to communicate with aliens, and the aliens also replied to the earthlings after receiving greetings from the earthlings, and the film caused great repercussions at the time, and the Arecibo telescope also appeared on the big screen two years later in 2017 with the "Chinese Sky Eye" because of its outstanding performance.
In the 2017 film "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2", the Arecibo telescope appeared as a research tool for Chinese astronomers, in which he searched for information about aliens and discovered alien spacecraft through the Arecibo telescope.
The Arecibo telescope in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" has a strong sense of the universe, but the real-life Arecibo telescope is not so lucky, although it has been observing our interstellar neighbors, but the natural disaster has not spared it, and in 2020, a storm in New Mexico, USA, brought a huge threat to this instrument.
The storm was caused by a strong earthquake in New Mexico, and although the earthquake did not affect the Arecibo telescope itself, it did cause a storm, and the hail in the storm caused a lot of damage to the parabolic reflector of the Arecibo telescope, causing the parabolic reflector of the Arecibo telescope to leak.
The parabolic reflector of the Arecibo telescope has fallen into disrepair and has suffered a lot of damage after the impact of the hail, although these damages are not fatal, but they still pose a threat to the life of the Arecibo telescope, because the damage to the parabolic reflector can cause it to lose its balance, which leads to the collapse of the Arecibo telescope.
On December 1, 2020, Dr. Wilson and his team finally discovered an aluminum plate on the Arecibo telescope's parabolic reflector, which had been severely deformed, and a steel cable was broken, and the broken steel cable also hit the reflector, so Wilson and his team began overhauling the Arecibo telescope.
However, the overhaul did not last long, and Wilson and his team discovered a more serious problem, as another steel cable broke in the middle of the overhaul work, and hit the reflector from the broken position, causing the reflector to be severely deformed.
In order to prevent the deformation of the reflector from causing the Arecibo telescope to collapse, Wilson and his team quickly developed a new maintenance plan, which included the addition of temporary supports to the reflector to prevent the deformation of the reflector from causing the collapse of the Arecibo telescope.
However, the implementation of this plan did not have the desired effect, the reflector was still deformed, and finally on December 1, 2020, the Arecibo telescope collapsed, and its collapse was precisely because of this disrepair, which caused its structure to be seriously disordered, which eventually led to its collapse.
epilogue
The collapse of the Arecibo telescope has shown how important it is to maintain and renew scientific facilities, and despite the collapse of the Arecibo telescope, human scientific research has not stopped, and the new facilities will continue to give humanity a picture of the universe.
For example, the United States now has the VLA, the successor to the Arecibo Telescope, and the United States plans to build a radio telescope on the moon called LCRT, which will be jointly built by the United States and Sweden.