Wednesday, August 30, 2023
Blame It On The Sockets: Forensic Analysis Of The Arecibo Collapse
Hackaday: In case you somehow missed it, back in 2020 we started getting ominous reports that the cables supporting the 900-ton instrument platform above the 300-meter primary reflector of what was at the time the world’s largest radio telescope were slowly coming undone.
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The failure of something this large is absolutely astonishing, especially it being caused by such a small easily fixed problem. So many structures have this kind of cable in use, which is worrying to think that they all could be subject to the same failures. This failure gives us the chance to try and catch as many of them as we can before they do but there’s no guarantee that we can fix them all in time, and even if we did. That's still an expensive endeavor, and many of the structures can’t just be fixed while they stay upright. Likely they will be deemed unsafe when they reach the point nearing failure and then they will just fail and break down. The article ends on a high note saying that it’s comforting to know what caused the failure, but even knowing it doesn’t mean we’ll be able to prevent it in current structures all it means is future structures won’t have the same issue.
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