Exciting news from the realm of personal achievements. This upcoming spring, I will be spending some wonderful time at the Arecibo Observatory, in Puerto Rico, making pulsar observations and otherwise pretending to be badass in an extremely nerdy manner. It’s exciting not only because it’s free (!), but because this is the largest radio telescope in the world. In fact, until the recent construction and completion of CERN’s Large Ha[rd]on Collider, the observatory remained the largest man-made single-structure scientific instrument in the history of… ever. The Gregorian dome onto which the incoming radio waves are reflected—the floating, geometric thingamabobber placed at the dish’s focal point—is a bit larger than your average six-story building. Unfortunately, recent Arecibo attention has largely concerned its budget crisis. Cornell University and NSF (and hence the US Government) have both ceased active funding measures, and the operating budget for the telescope is set to reach an historic minimum next year. If alternative forms of funding cannot be found, this machine, still the most accurate and wide-reaching radio-astrophysical device ever built, will be set for closure. In a time when the next Nobel in physics is likely to be awarded to astrophysics research (esp. re pulsars, particularly in the area of gravitational waves), when a new generation of young astrophysicists look forward to imminent, perhaps revolutionary, discoveries in their field, the termination of such a project would serve as a tremendous strike against hope. The history of all humans has been humanity’s constant struggle to come to an understanding of its own existence and location in the Universe. What kind of message are we sending to prospectively curious individuals, to people who truly care for the situation of humanity in the Cosmos, if we let this instrument fall to decay?

Exciting news from the realm of personal achievements. This upcoming spring, I will be spending some wonderful time at the Arecibo Observatory, in Puerto Rico, making pulsar observations and otherwise pretending to be badass in an extremely nerdy manner. It’s exciting not only because it’s free (!), but because this is the largest radio telescope in the world. In fact, until the recent construction and completion of CERN’s Large Ha[rd]on Collider, the observatory remained the largest man-made single-structure scientific instrument in the history of… ever. The Gregorian dome onto which the incoming radio waves are reflected—the floating, geometric thingamabobber placed at the dish’s focal point—is a bit larger than your average six-story building.

Unfortunately, recent Arecibo attention has largely concerned its budget crisis. Cornell University and NSF (and hence the US Government) have both ceased active funding measures, and the operating budget for the telescope is set to reach an historic minimum next year. If alternative forms of funding cannot be found, this machine, still the most accurate and wide-reaching radio-astrophysical device ever built, will be set for closure. In a time when the next Nobel in physics is likely to be awarded to astrophysics research (esp. re pulsars, particularly in the area of gravitational waves), when a new generation of young astrophysicists look forward to imminent, perhaps revolutionary, discoveries in their field, the termination of such a project would serve as a tremendous strike against hope. The history of all humans has been humanity’s constant struggle to come to an understanding of its own existence and location in the Universe. What kind of message are we sending to prospectively curious individuals, to people who truly care for the situation of humanity in the Cosmos, if we let this instrument fall to decay?