![]() But Arecibo was equipped to do just that, because of the radars. Normal radio telescopes weren’t terribly well equipped to look at very fast, time-changing signals. This unexpected find put radio astronomy front and center - and Arecibo took on a starring role.Ĭampbell: Arecibo was perfect for pulsars. In 1967, British astronomer Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered radio pulses emanating from objects in space that were quickly dubbed pulsars. Everybody was pretty excited about using it. The staff was pretty young there were quite a number of graduate students. It had only been in operation for a little over a year when I arrived there. And there was a lot of socializing that went on within the observatory, expatriate staff, et cetera. Because to some degree, they were thrown together. You always had occasional personal issues or something, but it was a very congenial group of people. The big staff got along just fine with everybody. But that didn’t affect relationships at the observatory. But the people around him are snowed trying to sort out the good ideas from the chaff.Ĭampbell: There was, oh, let’s just say, different visions between Gordon and Gold. I’m sure that Gold had talked him into it. I thought I was removed from a job that I deserved to have. Gordon: It was Corson who finally, in 1965, asked me to come back to Cornell. Gold: It’s all very well to be responsible for the construction, but we had to build up teams of people to operate the thing and to use it for the many different purposes for which it could be used, including radio astronomy, which Bill Gordon knew nothing about. Gordon: It was a matter of who was in control, I guess. But he soon found himself in a power struggle with Gold, who oversaw Arecibo from Cornell’s campus in Ithaca, New York. In 1960, Gordon moved to Arecibo to supervise its construction, leading up to its 1963 dedication. Thomas Gold (1978): Bill Gordon unfortunately didn’t take kindly to that. In 1959, Cornell’s Dean of Engineering Dale Corson lured the brash British astrophysicist Thomas Gold from Harvard University to run a burgeoning astronomy program that would include overseeing Arecibo. The field was still in its infancy, and the prospect of a facility as powerful as Arecibo drew attention. While Gordon was primarily interested in studying the upper atmosphere, radio astronomers were intrigued as well. But even ARPA realized fairly early on while the telescope was being built that this probably wasn’t going to be terribly useful - as it wasn’t, by the way. Radar astronomy and radio astronomy were essentially fringe benefits.ĭonald Campbell, former Arecibo director: ARPA was interested in trying to figure out ways to detect incoming nuclear missiles by a wake that they might leave in the ionosphere. Gordon (1994): Honestly, the observatory was built to study the upper atmosphere. Puerto Ricans feel quite proud of the observatory. To me, it was like a cathedral to science.Ībel Méndez, planetary astrobiologist, University of Puerto Rico, Arecibo: In The Avengers, there’s a thing that one of the Avengers says to intimidate: “We have a Hulk!” For Puerto Rico, it’s: “We have Arecibo!” Something to brag about, something to feel confident about. You know, it had these three towers pointing at the sky. We were young enough that we didn’t know we couldn’t do it.ĭaniel Altschuler, former Arecibo director: People came to look at the wonder. We were in the position of trying to do something that was impossible. When we were talking about building it back in the late ’50s, we were told by eminent authorities it couldn’t be done. William Gordon (at Arecibo’s 40th anniversary, 2003): I do not know how we ever built it. All interviews have been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. Pioneering figures Gordon and astrophysicist Thomas Gold are no longer alive, but their voices appear here thanks to oral histories archived at the Niels Bohr Library at the American Institute of Physics (AIP). That Arecibo would become the world’s most iconic radio telescope, discovering exotic stars and alien worlds, was almost an accident of history.Īstronomy talked to Arecibo researchers who worked at the telescope throughout its long history. military’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), which was interested in using it to track nuclear missile launches. Conceived by Cornell University electrical engineer William Gordon as an enormous radar to study the ionosphere, the facility was managed by Cornell and funded by the U.S. Upon opening in 1963, the telescope was called the Arecibo Ionosphere Observatory. 1, 2020, it was a tragic end to a living monument with a storied history. When the receiving platform at the legendary Arecibo Observatory came crashing down in a 900-ton heap of twisted metal on Dec.
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