(Sorry for the double-whammy of sad news, it’s just one of those days)
The observatory had been shut down since August from a cable snap that had punched a huge hole in the dish. But yesterday, the structure collapsed catastrophically.
Amigos es con profundo pesar comunicarles que acaba de colapsar la plataforma del Observatorio de Arecibo. pic.twitter.com/stJScy2Old
— Deborah Martorell (@DeborahTiempo) December 1, 2020
From Scientific American:
At six simultaneous press conferences around the globe, astronomers on Wednesday announced they had accomplished the seemingly impossible: taking a picture of a black hole, a cosmic monster so voracious that light itself cannot escape its clutches.
This historic feat, performed by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT)—a planet-spanning network of radio observatories—required more than a decade of effort. The project’s name refers to a black hole’s most defining characteristic, an “event horizon” set by the object’s mass and spin beyond which no infalling material, including light, can ever return.
For those following Science news, you may have heard that NASA was planning on making a big announcement today about… something. Something astrobiology related. Well, those spoilers of all things spoilerriffic at Gizmodo have spilled the beans again – NASA found life different from life as we know it on Earth, organisms that use Arsenic instead of Phosphorous in their molecular structure. Continue reading →