Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff. Lauren Volga bam here for fifty seven years.
Speaker 1: The air Cebo Observatory Radio and radar telescope facility, located
Speaker 1: about twelve miles or nineteen kilometers south of the city
Speaker 1: of air Cebo in Puerto Rico, was one of astronomy's
Speaker 1: greatest treasures until recently. Air Cebo had the biggest radio
Speaker 1: telescope in the world, and its ability to detect distant
Speaker 1: signals made it one of the world's most powerful tools
Speaker 1: for studying both planets and moons in our own Solar
Speaker 1: system and mysterious objects in distant regions of the universe.
Speaker 1: Over the years, scientists used it to determine Mercury's rotation
Speaker 1: rate and map the surface of Venus, to discover the
Speaker 1: first binary pulsar and the first known exoplanet. Air Cebo's
Speaker 1: researchers also made important findings about the properties and orbits
Speaker 1: of asteroids that are potentially hazardous to Earth. Back in
Speaker 1: four air Cebo was even used to broadcast a radio
Speaker 1: message toward a globular star cluster twenty one thousand light
Speaker 1: years from Earth, filled with data that could potentially be
Speaker 1: deciphered by extraterrestrials to produce a simple illustration depicting a
Speaker 1: stick figure human, our solar system, DNA, and some of
Speaker 1: the biochemicals of early life. The message was designed by
Speaker 1: astronomer Frank Drake with the help of Carl Sagan and
Speaker 1: other scientists. The telescope's deterioration became evident back in August
Speaker 1: when a support cable failed and slipped out of its dish,
Speaker 1: leaving a one hundred foot or thirty meter gash in
Speaker 1: the dish. Engineers worked to try to figure out how
Speaker 1: to repair the damage and determine the integrity of the structure,
Speaker 1: but then on November six, a main cable on the
Speaker 1: same tower broke, as well, a hint that other cables
Speaker 1: might be weaker than initially believed. At that point, an
Speaker 1: engineering evaluation determined that it would be too risky even
Speaker 1: to do more repair work on the telescope. On November nineteenth,
Speaker 1: the National Science Foundation announced that the Observatories Radio Telescope
Speaker 1: would be discommissioned and dismantled, But before that could happen,
Speaker 1: on December one, the instrument platform collapsed. This nine hundred
Speaker 1: ton instrument platform was suspended by cables attached to three
Speaker 1: towers at a height of four hundred and fifty feet
Speaker 1: that's about a hundred and forty above the telescope's massive
Speaker 1: radio telescope dish. It's one thousand feet or three hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty in diameter. The platform suddenly broke away from
Speaker 1: its supports and fell. The National Science Foundation has authorized
Speaker 1: repairs to air sebos lied our instrument and a smaller
Speaker 1: telescope used for atmospheric science, but rebuilding air Sebos radio
Speaker 1: telescope would cost an estimated three hundred and fifty million dollars.
Speaker 1: A National Science Foundation official indicated at a December third
Speaker 1: press conference that it could take years for the federal
Speaker 1: government to make a decision about whether to do that,
Speaker 1: but in the meanwhile, they said that the observatory would
Speaker 1: not close completely. In addition to operating the smaller dish
Speaker 1: and the lidar instrument, the visitors center would remain open.
Speaker 1: The sudden and shocking apparent end of air Cebo's radio
Speaker 1: telescope caused an outpouring of remembrances on Twitter with the
Speaker 1: hashtag what air Cebo means to me, both from researchers
Speaker 1: who had used the telescope, and ordinary people who had
Speaker 1: visited the observatory and been inspired by it. People have
Speaker 1: chosen to get married there, and it was used as
Speaker 1: a setting in the James Bond movie Golden Eye and
Speaker 1: sci fi drama Contact. Air Cebo was built back in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three at a cost of nine point three
Speaker 1: million dollars, which is close to eighty million in today's money.
Speaker 1: It came to exist due in large part to the
Speaker 1: efforts of Cornell University physicist William E. Gordon, who was
Speaker 1: interested in studying the Earth's ionosphere. Gordon shows Puerto Rico
Speaker 1: for the site because the sun, moon, and planets passed
Speaker 1: almost to rerectly overhead, plus a natural synkhole south of
Speaker 1: the city of air Sebo provided a cost effective way
Speaker 1: to support his design of a spherical bowl shaped reflector
Speaker 1: planted in the ground with a movable receiver hanging over it.
Speaker 1: Pretty quickly, scientists realized the observatory would also be useful
Speaker 1: in the then new fields of radio and radar astronomy.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty five, one of the observatory's first great
Speaker 1: accomplishments was to discover that the true rotation rate of Mercury,
Speaker 1: the nearest planet to the Sun was just fifty nine days,
Speaker 1: not eight as had been previously estimated. In nine sixty eight,
Speaker 1: air SEBO scientists showed that sporadic radio pulses from the
Speaker 1: direction of the crab Nebulus supernova remnant came from a
Speaker 1: pulsar located at the center of the nebula. Other important
Speaker 1: discoveries followed. In nineteen seventy four, air Sebo was used
Speaker 1: to discover the first pulsar in a binary system, which
Speaker 1: provided important confirmation for Albert einstein mines theory of general relativity,
Speaker 1: and for which the astronomers involved were awarded the Nobel Prize.
Speaker 1: In In the nine eighties and nineties, scientists used air
Speaker 1: Cebo to make more discoveries about the Solar System. They
Speaker 1: used the telescope's radar to produce the first ever maps
Speaker 1: of the surface of the planet Venus, whose thick cloud
Speaker 1: layer had blocked optical telescopes view. They also found that
Speaker 1: despite Mercury's high surface temperature, the planet still has ice
Speaker 1: in shadowed craters at its north and south poles. In
Speaker 1: air cebo was instrumental and yet another monumentous first. The
Speaker 1: discovery of exoplanets, which are planets outside of our Solar
Speaker 1: system orbiting around a pulsar. In two thousand three, air
Speaker 1: Sebo provided evidence for the existence of hydrocarbon lakes on Titan,
Speaker 1: a moon of Saturn, and in recent years, air Cebo
Speaker 1: has continued to gather important information, including helping to calculate
Speaker 1: distances that are important for understanding the universe. It's also
Speaker 1: produced radar images of Mars that revealed lava flows and
Speaker 1: other geological features that hadn't been detected in visual images
Speaker 1: of the red planet. Today's episode was written by Patrick J.
Speaker 1: Tiger and produced by Tyler Klang. For more on this
Speaker 1: and lots of other far seeing topics, visit how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Brain Stuff is production of I Heart
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