Short Wave - The Long Legacy Of The Arecibo Telescope

Episode Date: November 30, 2020

The National Science Foundation recently announced it plans to decommission the Arecibo Telescope in Puerto Rico. The world-renowned telescope has suffered substantial damage this year. Today, we revisit our conversation with planetary scientist Edgard Rivera-Valentín about the unique role Arecibo has played in both scientific research and popular culture. (Encore episode.) Email the show at [e-mail] pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's Maddie Safaya. A few months ago, we did a story about a giant telescope in Arcebo, Puerto Rico, a telescope that has driven decades of scientific discovery. But back in August, it was damaged when a cable fell, and then a different cable snapped, leading to even more damage. The people who own the telescope, the National Science Foundation, announced that they planned to shut it down due to serious safety concerns. But supporters of the scope say that this damage was due to years of neglect. And they've already sent a petition to the White House asking for the federal government to find a way to stabilize the structure. For many, the Arecibo telescope is more than just a scientific instrument. It's a point of pride for the people of Puerto Rico and a beacon of scientific collaboration. And so today we're returning to that earlier episode from August.

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. The first word Ed Rivera-Valentine ever spoke was Luna, moon in Spanish. Ed grew up on the northern coast of Puerto Rico near the Arecibo telescope. The reason I am in astronomy and planetary science is because of that telescope. My parents took me up there when I think I was three. I remember looking over and just being completely and utterly stunned. And getting to know that that type of science and that an instrument so valuable for the entire world was literally in my backyard was something that just told me, okay, this is what I have to do. I have to be part of this community.

I have to get to do this really cool science. Ed does really cool science. They even ended up working at the telescope itself for several years. I've heard people say that when they go up to it, it's almost a really cool science. a religious experience. The telescope is huge. The dish is a thousand feet in diameter and covers just about 20 acres.

Suspended above is a 900-ton platform that holds a bunch of scientific instruments. It was constructed in the 1960s, and now, Ed says that the telescope has permeated much of Puerto Rican culture. When you're walking around San Juan and looking at the art, Artists are making paintings of the telescope.

That's how ingrained the telescope is in our culture. These days, Ed's a planetary scientist with the University Space Research Association at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. That's where they were when they heard the news that Arasibo, the telescope, had suffered major damage. So in early August, one of the wires that helped to suspend the platform in the air, came off, it snapped off. In your mind, imagine it kind of like a rubber band, because it comes off with force, and it hit the side of the Gregorian Dome,

and then it came down and slammed onto the dish, causing a hole to form, and a lot of those panels to have. have to be broken. Gotcha. So, you know, what went through your mind when you heard about this damage, Ed? When you're working at a telescope, as a scientist, as an engineer, as anyone at a telescope, that facility is almost, you know, a second home for you. And when you come to your house and you see it broken, obviously you're going to feel something for it. So the next part that at least came to my mind was, okay, I know what these people are going through. I need to send them a big box of chocolate or something because they're going to need this. So today in the show, a closer look at the Adisibo Observatory, what's at stake with

the recent damage and the unique role the telescope plays in both scientific research and popular culture. I'm Maddie Safaya, and you're listening to Shortwave from NPR. So let's step back for a minute, Ed, and get a better sense of how the telescope has been used over the years. Tell me about what it does, what kind of projects it's worked on. So one of the really neat things about the Odyssey Observatory is that it's a very versatile scientific instrument. Most telescopes, most radio telescopes don't have the ability to send out light.

They only capture light. At the observatory, we can send and capture light. When an asteroid's coming by, we are pretty much a flashlight that we turn on, we send radar out to it, and that radar comes back. Right. We can tell you how far these objects are down to a few meters. Unbelievable, Ed. Yeah, right?

And we care about where these asteroids are going to be because what if one day this thing comes around and gets too close to Earth. But if we can let people know this is going to happen in next year, we can actually prepare for it. Like the dinosaurs, they didn't have a space program, so they didn't get to prepare for anything. That's true. We do have that on the dinosaurs. We don't have much, but we have out of seabode.

and we have the direct understanding of asteroids because of it. Exactly. And, you know, I also think just from an outsider's perspective, like this telescope does really play a role in our cultural imagination. It contributes to our sense of awe, you know, about the universe. Like, I think I remember in the 70s it was used to deliberately beam a message into space. You know, like, hey, we're here. Like, I mean, it really has, like, not only these scientific contributions,

but these cultural contributions. It's an inspirational place, you know? Oh, yeah. I love Marvel. I love Marvel comics and things like that, and I was watching, although I'm a little old, it doesn't matter. I was watching a cartoon about the Avengers,

and the Avengers were flying off to the OdysseyO Observatory to save it. What? How cool was that still today in the cartoon? Oh, my gosh. So, yeah, so it really is, you know, it's not like one of those fields of science or scientific tools that really stays in academia.

right? It provides a broader context for understanding the universe for non-academics as well, which I think is really special and important. Yeah, it's like I mentioned, because of its versatility, it gets to be part of not only applied science, but, you know, just part of typical day-to-day life. You may not see it, but it's there in a cultural context. It's there, you know, saving your life, making sure this asteroid is not coming towards you. It's really cool. So it sounds like, Ed, this recent damage has, you know, big implications in terms of slowing down a lot of research. What kind of research are we going to be missing out on right now with it down?

Well, from a personal perspective, I actually had some observing runs that were going to come up in late September through October, where we were going to be studying Mars with radar. This year, Mars was going to be the closest it was going to be, and also observable, from the Aless Aal Observatory until the year 2067. So this year was literally a once-in-a-time opportunity to observe Mars with Alesiol. Oh, 2020, Ed. Worse year ever. Yeah.

Okay. So the cable damage that happened this year isn't the first hurdle for the observatory, right? Hurricane Maria damaged the observatory in 2017. You were working there, right? Like, tell me about that experience. So in 2017, when Hurricane Maria came by, not only was I was still working at the observatory, I actually stayed at the observatory. That's where I went for shelter. So I got to see the winds come by and the damage.

For me, one of the things that like hit me the most or made me realize the damage the most after the hurricane when we went outside and when you look across the telescope, you know, it's in the middle of a beautiful. rainforest greenery everywhere and that day after the hurricane when we went outside there's there was no green left it just nothing it was just brown everything was brown the trees were dead you could see all the way down to the soil it was i guess impactful in the sense of wow this is the damage of the hurricane but also impactful as a Puerto rican who's used to seeing their island be beautiful and green so let me go outside and like that's gone that was all gone in the in a day. Oh, that's tough.

That, you know, it starts being quite a bit less about the science at that point. Oh, very quickly. I mean, after the hurricane, when there was no utilities at all on the island, we still had a couple of generators. So people from out of sea, would drive up. We'd pump water for them, and they could leave with a bunch of water. They didn't have to, you know, not drink water. Wow.

So, okay, Ed, let's talk a little bit about the funding struggles, right? Because there have been ongoing funding struggles for the telescope. Break that down a little bit for me. Yeah, so the telescope, which is owned by the National Science Foundation, has had some funding struggles in that the budget that is used to operate it has been going down. And it's gone down from anywhere from about 14 mil per year with the expected current contract. could go all the way down to 2 million. Gotcha. And so what will that mean for the telescope and the people that work on it?

So as there is diminishing funds going there, there'll be less available time for people to, you know, go explore or go observe pulsars and find the first evidence for gravitational waves, which won the telescope a Nobel Prize in physics in 1993. It's less and less science. So, you know, this telescope is obviously an exceptional scientific. tool. You know, you've told me maybe even more importantly, it sounds like it's important to a lot of people in Puerto Rico. With all of these challenges it's facing, you know, what are your hopes for the observatory long term? So I know that many people, when they look at an instrument, even their

own car, you don't keep a car after, what, 10 years or something like that? When you see an instrument that's aging, you immediately go, okay, maybe it's time to get something new. A telescope like the Adisiel Observatory, although it's going on beyond 50 years, it doesn't mean all of the instruments there are that old. It has been updated. It has been upkept. There's still really neat science that is being done. Just a couple years ago, this radioastronomical phenomenon called fast radio bursts, FRBs, or as I like to call them Furbys, were spotted with Adisible data, right? This completely new thing that we hadn't seen before. new data, new science, just these couple of past years.

We don't know what new science can be done with a telescope unless we keep observing, unless we keep looking, right? So my personal hope is in the acknowledgement of the fact that the observatory is still an incredibly important instrument for scientific progress, my hope is that we keep it, we keep it open. We keep doing great science with it. And we keep doing great science with it on the island, getting to be part of my culture, getting to inspire new people to come into STEM fields. In my own field in planetary science, the Latinx Hispanic community is underrepresented by about 90%.

But if we can use these type of instruments to inspire, to help bridge gaps, to help bridge opportunity gaps, we can get the field more diverse. We can actually bridge this low under-representation. So my hope is that Addisie Will gets to continue to be part of science, but also gets to be part of the pipeline issue and gets to help remedy it. All right, Ed, I learned a lot about the telescope. I'm very excited about it. Thank you for your time.

I appreciate you. And I appreciate the observatory a lot more, even more somehow. Awesome. Thank you so much for inviting me. It was a real pleasure getting to talk with you. This episode was produced by Britt Hansen, fact-checked by Viet Le, and edited by Deborah George. I'm Maddie Safaya. Thanks for listening to Shortwave from NPR.