Radio Observatory faces closure

I’ve just been reading this Wash Post story about the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, which is apparently the largest and most sensitive radio telescope on Earth:

..among astronomers, Arecibo is an icon of hard science. Its instruments have netted a decades-long string of discoveries about the structure and evolution of the universe. Its high-powered radar has mapped in exquisite detail the surfaces and interiors of neighboring planets.

And it is the only site on the planet able to track asteroids with enough precision to tell which ones might plow into Earth - a disaster that could cause as many as a billion deaths and that experts say is preventable with enough warning.

This is the observatory featured in the movie Contact. If you read the whole article, it describes more of the real science performed there. Unfortunately it faces closure due to a funding shortfall.

The National Science Foundation, which has long funded the dish, has told the Cornell University-operated facility that it will have to close if it cannot find outside sources for half of its already reduced $8 million budget in the next three years - an ultimatum that has sent ripples of despair through the scientific community.

It seems a shame that the only observatory able to warn us of a disastrous asteroid impact (not to mention all the other science it performs), may have to close for the want of only $4 million (that’s million with an “M”). They are looking for other funding, so I’m hopeful it will stay operational.

In other news, federal money given to religious groups is in excess of $2 billion (that’s billion with a “B”) annually. Phew - that’s a relief. Because I’d be concerned if money that could be spent on science was instead being wasted on pointless superstitious nonsense unrelated to anything happening in the real world.

Comments

[Brian York]

While Arecibo may have appeared in "Contact", the array *featured* in the movie was the Very Large Array (VLA), located in Socorro, NM (having visited the VLA but not (yet) Arecibo, I can certainly say that the VLA is an incredible sight). Arecibo, on the other hand, was featured in the James Bond film "Goldeneye".

Sadly, at this point in my Astronomy career, I have yet to use data from either the VLA or Arecibo (except in data reduction exercises), but some of Arecibo's current projects (especially the ALFA L-band detector array, and its ALFALFA sky survey offer the possibility of an incredibly detailed 21-cm survey of the sky visible from Arecibo (a 7-element detector array may not seem impressive compared to something like MegaCam's 300 megapixel CCD array, but when you compare the size of an L-band feedhorn to the size of a CCD pixel, it becomes obvious how impressive it really is).

[Just Me]

Skeptico -

I think I'm on the same side of the "religion as an interesting-at-best myth" divide, but I also think that you are somewhat disingenuous about the US$2,000,000,000- the feds give to religious groups.

Let me be clear about my view: ANY moneys from The State provided to religious groups directly and obviously violates the Separation of Church and State principle as well as the corollary Constitutional Law.

Needless to say, having read the NPR article you link to, it’s clear that a majority (perhaps all) of that money is given out to support community initiatives. It’s not just free money. Additionally, any organization, even a fanatical and fascist faith-base program must follow federal guidelines on how the funded programs are administered. Of course, those guidelines (and Laws!) have to enforced – but at least they are there.

One final point – a possible silver lining: In order to work under those conditions, faith-based programs must serve the broad community without limitation based on race, religion, or creed. That, in turn, puts at least some pressure on the people involved to become more accepting of others and catholic (in the secular sense of the word).

What mostly pisses me off, however, is how this Executive Branch administration (i.e. the puppet masters of George “Dubya” Bush) use an unchecked (and unbalanced) free hand to torque the laws and spirit of These, Our United States.

But maybe that’s…