After almost six decades of cutting-edge research — and having survived hurricanes and earthquakes — the world’s most famous radio telescope is to be decommissioned. Part of its legacy is a little known experiment that used the telescope to send a message from Earth to places where there might be other potential civilizations in our galaxy.
Nestled in the highlands of Puerto Rico, the 305-metre-diameter dish of Aricebo made it the largest radio telescope in the world, unique in its design when it was built in 1963.
Unlike other radio telescopes that are mounted on enormous movable platforms, the Arecibo dish was laid out in the bottom of a natural circular hollow, which allowed it to reach such enormous proportions. Because it remains stationary and points straight up, it uses the rotation of the Earth to scan the skies as the stars pass overhead.
Sadly, the structure became unsafe after supporting cables holding the 900-tonne instrument platform let go this summer and fall, sending debris crashing through the dish to the ground. The damage makes the huge telescope too dangerous to repair, and so the U.S. National Science Foundation has announced that the facility will be closed and the structure dismantled.
The Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. (Seth Shostak/SETI Institute/Associated Press)
During its lifetime, the Arecibo telescope made numerous discoveries, detecting planets in other solar systems, spotting neutron stars and pulsars, and observing molecular clouds in other galaxies.
But in addition to receiving radio signals from the astronomical phenomena in the cosmos, it was also a powerful radio transmitter, able to send out 2.5 megawatt radio beams that could be bounced off asteroids passing close to Earth to get an idea of their shape and orbital motion.
That transmitting ability was also used to explore one of the most fundamental questions in astronomy: “Is anyone out there?”
In 1974, astronomers Frank Drake and Carl Sagan, from Cornell University, designed a message that encodes crude images of a human being, the DNA molecule, the planets in our solar system and the telescope itself.
A representation of the digital Arecibo message (Arecibo observatory/US National Science Foundation)
The giant telescope was used to beam the signal across our galaxy to a star cluster called M13 in the constellation Hercules. The cluster contains about 300,000 densely-packed stars, many of which are at least 12 billion years old. In solar systems around these old stars there’s certainly been time, if conditions are right, for intelligent civilizations to have potentially evolved.
The beamed message would reach a large number of stars at once increasing the chances of contact — if anyone’s listening.
Of course, no one is expecting an answer to the signal anytime soon because M13 is roughly 25,000 light years away, so the message will take 25,000 years just to get there. Then, if anyone detects it, and if they understand it, and if they feel like answering, it will be another 25,000 years for their signal to reach us.
That’s 50,000 years just to say, “Hi, is anyone out there?” and get the reply, “Yes, what do you want?” It clearly demonstrates the difficulties of communicating over astronomical distances, which was Drake’s actual reason for the exercise.
He also developed the Drake Equation, which was meant to calculate the odds of there being other intelligent civilization in a galaxy. He also founded the found the SETI Institute, which is dedicated to the search for signals from other civilizations and used the Arecibo telescope for a time to conduct that search of the heavens — listening for the kind of signal that Aricebo had beamed out in 1974.
An aerial view shows the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) in the remote Pingtang county in southwest China’s Guizhou province. (Liu Xu/Xinhua/Associated Press)
Astronomers will mourn the loss of the big dish and will have to move their research to other facilities, including another even larger dish of similar design that recently became operational in China. It’s called FAST, which stands for Five- hundred-metre, Aperture, Spherical Telescope. It will take over where Arecibo left off. Perhaps one day another interstellar message will be sent from there.
Who knows, perhaps one day, 50 millennia from now, aliens who have followed our signal to its origin will land in Puerto Rico, look into that hollow in the ground and wonder, who were those people who reached out to say hello?
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
