CABLE BREAKS AT ARECIBO’S GIANT RADIO-TELESCOPE CAUSING SEVERE ...

Today's unusual story was found and shared by E.J., to whom many thanks. I wouldn't be blogging about it except that something in the article caught my eye. The accident occurred at the giant reflector dish of Puerto Rico's Arecibo radio-telescope, which has had its fair share of strange events and attention. For example, as the article itself points out, the telescope was seen in the final scenes of the James Bond movie Golden Eye, as Bond (Pierce Brosnan) battled it out above the huge dish with the villain of the movie, played by Sean Bean. Similarly, the telescope was featured by reference in an episode of The X-Files, where Fox Mulder is sent by a U.S. Senator to retrieve original tapes of a signal from outer space intercepted by the telescope that was "proof" of extraterrestrial life, a veiled reference to the so-called "Wow" signal received in 1977 by Ohio State University's radio telescope. The big dish was featured yet again in the movie Contact. At least as far as science fiction goes, in other words, the facility is deliberately associated with "what's going on out there."

So here's the article:

The investigation into why a cable mysteriously broke on the Arecibo Observatory has begun

The story is simple enough: a support cable holding up the platform  above the dish that contains the actual equipment for signals receiving, snapped, broke loose, and as a result, severely damaged the reflector dish of the telescope:

On Monday (Aug. 10), an auxiliary cable supporting a platform that is suspended above the 1,000-foot-wide (300 meters) radio dish broke and crashed into the telescope's reflector panels, creating a gash in the dish measuring about 100 feet (30 m) long.

In a news conference with reporters Friday (Aug. 14), Arecibo director Francisco Cordova said that 250 of the observatory's primary reflector dish panels were damaged, along with several support cables underneath the dish. But observatory officials have not yet fully assessed the extent of the damage or determined the cost of the repairs needed to get the 56-year-old radio telescope — once the largest single radio dish on Earth — back in action.

So in other words, the world's largest single dish radio telescope is out of action, unable to function. Additionally, the failure was sudden, and has left the equipment platform above the dish twisted, with the damage to the equipment suite as yet unassessed:

Cordova said that the auxiliary cable was designed to last at least another 15 to 20 years, so it's not clear why the cable failed. It was one of several auxiliary cables that were added to the observatory in the 1990s to help support a new addition to the telescope, called the Gregorian dome, which houses an antenna  receiver on the platform.

In a statement issued Monday, UCF officials said that about six to eight panels on the Gregorian dome had been damaged by the broken cable, and that the platform used to access the dome was left slightly twisted. But it's not yet clear if the instruments inside the dome had been affected, Cordova said, adding that officials were still inspecting the damages.

Now with all the weird space stuff going on lately, plus the general mystique of the place associated with its appearances in fiction films and television series, you can color me skeptical at least, if not intensely curious. But then there's this picture, from the article, that really grabbed my attention, for as the old adage goes, a picture is worth a thousand words:

Damaged Cable at Arecibo

What struck me about this cable was the appearance and suggestion it gives of a single point of failure, almost appearing as if someone had taken an immense saw and cut straight through the cable. It also reminded me of something else, another picture from decades ago, involving a another catastrophic failure, and cabling:

Tacoma Narrows Bridge: Lessons From the Failure of a Great ...

Suspension Cable of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge (Galloping Gertie) after her catastrophic failure

It's that disturbing picture from Galloping Gertie's cable, plus the nearly clean "cut-like" nature of the Arecibo cable, that has my mind deeply into the red zone on my suspicion meter, for while there are similarities, there are differences. The Galloping Gertie example shows cabling that clearly has snapped due to the immense stresses put upon it during the bridge's failure. But notably, the cable itself did not break and fail. The bridge's failure was due to other reasons we needn't get into here. The cabling we see from the Galloping Gertie example is of several strands of the cable that snapped under that stress, and as one can see, the result is a tangle of cabling spaghetti.

The Arecibo cabling, while showing a little of the "spaghetti", shows something in the main quite different,  and there's no other way to put it than that it shows a sudden, sharp and mostly failure due to unknown stresses, or it's showing evidence of possible deliberate sabotage.

But if the latter, then Who? and Why?

See you on the flip side...

Posted in

Joseph P. Farrell

Joseph P. Farrell has a doctorate in patristics from the University of Oxford, and pursues research in physics, alternative history and science, and "strange stuff". His book The Giza DeathStar, for which the Giza Community is named, was published in the spring of 2002, and was his first venture into "alternative history and science".

33 Comments

  1. Anna Grahm on August 21, 2020 at 6:51 pm

    Also it appears that the cable on the Galloping Gertie bridge snapped very close to the support of the bridge rather than somewhere along the center of the cable, where it would have to be due to poor manufacturing – and, if that were the case, it would have happened much sooner and with considerably different results.
    Sincerely, Captain Obvious.



  2. Margaret on August 18, 2020 at 11:25 pm

    Looks like to me the cables might have been severed with laser precision.



  3. Richard on August 18, 2020 at 10:01 pm

    A close up of that metal could be very revealing, no revelation there, but one photo shows signs of metal affected by high heat. As Arecibo director Francisco Cordova mentions, it will probably bounce back into operation. The panels look to be replaceable and cables refitted. Between earthquakes, hurricanes, and the rains and winds, that leaves reassessment of structural inspections for wear and tear.

    Then again, if listening in on matters verboten or collecting data verboten aussehen that poses another set of variables for later procedures and press releases. Wonder what the weather was like at the time of the cable snap. Or what it means for that Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) giant dish that the Party has recently built in China’s Guizhou Province finished in 2016. Now the world’s largest functioning radio telescope.



  4. James on August 18, 2020 at 9:39 pm

    The density of the oxide layer at the cut level is of intrigue as is the seemingly layer separation without characteristic end thinning as would be expected due tensile strain fracture. It is unlikely that a cable would have that symmetric perfect corrosion hardening in a clean cut to be sure.



  5. marcos toledo on August 18, 2020 at 8:21 pm

    Just wondering when they will begin shutting down the optical telescopes. Is anyone beginning to see a pattern here to isolate humanity from the rest of the cosmos and to what ends?



    • Loxie Lou Davie on August 19, 2020 at 10:57 am

      To what ends??? Check out Shepard Ambellas of Intellihub!

      I’m sure we all remember talk about the planet that has a 3,600 yr. circuit?! When it closes in, it causes great devastation on this planet of ours!!

      Could this be what accounts for the seemingly recurrent
      “resettings” of the Human Race here on this planet? Seems to me we could really USE a “reset” right now to bring everybody back to Reality!!

      By the way, the presence of said planet was confirmed in 1979. Check out The Liberty Man, John Moore. A Navy Seal told him about a briefing they were given in 1985 stating that IN THEIR LIFETIME the sea levels would rise about 400 ft. They were advised to retire to the AR-MO Ozarks!!!

      What would be the point of our world govt’s telling The Public many of us were about to be “wiped out”….better to let us continue our normal lives & get us all used to obeying Authority Figures by becoming members of The Branch Covidians(Henry Makow-Mike Stone)!! 😉 I thought that was a good one & laughed out loud when I first read it!!! Of course, it is referring to the Mask Wearers!!



  6. goshawks on August 18, 2020 at 7:24 pm

    Good article from Ars Technica on the Arecibo failure, plus plenty of informed comments on the structure of the dish itself:
    https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/08/the-iconic-arecibo-telescope-goes-quiet-after-major-damage/

    (I would say that the cable failure looks more like decades of neglect and non-inspection…)



    • zendogbreath on August 18, 2020 at 10:48 pm

      Guess we know how Chernobyl happened. Hope Fort Calhoun and all others are better maintained than a couple years ago.



  7. BlueWren on August 18, 2020 at 6:31 pm

    Maybe to stop people from seeing this … https://youtu.be/tJR1YCeqM3E



    • Roger on August 18, 2020 at 11:20 pm

      Very odd. I’m beginning to think there is lots of activity all over our solar system all the time it’s just being hid from us. The whole Galaxy is mining our Solar system for strategic, rare and valuable elements and it’s being hid from us. Intelligent life is everywhere and a major highway between uncountable alien species and worlds super conducts to and from our Sun every day.(Sun may be a major way point in the Galactic String of commerce from Star Pole to Star Pole and from Galactic Pole to another Galaxy Pole) And our secret World Government knows all about it and are even trading with some visitors while keeping us in the dark. May even have a treaty for the visitors to hide their presence from us for as long as possible.



      • Roger on August 18, 2020 at 11:28 pm

        But not hiding it all for our benefit, but to cheat us out of our true potential and to continue using us as slaves. Made up something so the aliens wouldn’t come here to find out how badly we being misled, used, and abused by our own leaders. We likely have rights we are not even aware and our leaders are decieving us and the visitors to keep their crime against us hidden from the Galactic Interpole!



      • Loxie Lou Davie on August 20, 2020 at 3:57 pm

        Linda M. Howe confers with the opinion that we are ALREADY on Galactic Trade Routes from conversations she has had with “insiders”!!



    • Loxie Lou Davie on August 19, 2020 at 11:01 am

      That AND The Perturber!!!



  8. zendogbreath on August 18, 2020 at 4:29 pm

    Alright. It’s a reach. Here goes.

    Sometimes technologies overreach practicality whether for vaccines or large construction projects.
    https://www.freedomwatchusa.org/dont-worry-russias-vaccine-has-no-side-effects



    • WalkingDead on August 18, 2020 at 5:30 pm

      Some side effects are worse than others it would seem. Definitely got a chuckle out of this one.



  9. Robert Barricklow on August 18, 2020 at 11:53 am

    WalkingDead points out a number of closures due to the magic co0vid1984. That virus asks us to close our mouths, masking them. Perhaps, the virus is asking others to close our ears and eyes to the stars as well.
    Galileo whisperred, “I saw something move”



    • Robert Barricklow on August 18, 2020 at 12:01 pm

      Oops!
      “And yet it moves”
      Galileo whispered it during heresy inquisition, after being forced to admit the earth does not revolve around the sun.



    • Robert Barricklow on August 18, 2020 at 4:28 pm

      Or, physicist Enrico Fermi, “Where is everybody?”.



  10. Kevin Ryan on August 18, 2020 at 11:46 am

    Also remarkable about this failure – the cable is obviously made of strands of wire and yet at the point of failure, the strands appear to have been fused. Melt the strands together and the ability of the cable to flex and move in response to wind and temperature changes will be impaired. It no longer acts like a cable. Stresses will be focused on the fused area, leading to a stress fracture, which may have been provoked by either making a cut in the fused area or by connecting to the cable a device (motor?) that would vibrate the cable and send tremors to the fused portion. Examination of the entire length of cable is crucial.



    • goshawks on August 18, 2020 at 7:20 pm

      https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/08/the-iconic-arecibo-telescope-goes-quiet-after-major-damage/?comments=1&post=39151273#comment-39151273
      chriskrum – Aug 15, 2020 9:14 AM
      “The failure mode is alarming. The cable pulled out of its socket–it didn’t snap–it pulled out of the molten metal plug that’s poured over the separated cables inside a steel anchor bell. It’s typical suspension technology and how all of its other cables are fixed. If the same failure mechanism which is likely material is at work in the others, then that is a huge problem that will be very difficult and expensive to remedy. Far more so than fixing the relatively light and accessible mesh structure of the dish.”



      • zendogbreath on August 18, 2020 at 10:41 pm

        So is he saying it’s a materials failure in the metal used to bind the end of the cable around on itself? Are we talking about something like a crimped ferrule to put a loop into the end of a cable? Only molten? Welded?



        • goshawks on August 18, 2020 at 11:36 pm

          Without seeing Arecibo, here is what I think he is talking about – based on how they secure the load-ends of bridge cables:
          https://www.loc.gov/resource/hhh.ca1352.sheet/?sp=11
          Check-out how the San Francisco Anchorage and the Yerba Bueno Anchorage are constructed. It sounds like those used concrete as the filler, rather than a poured “molten metal plug.” However, the ‘guts’ should be similar…



        • goshawks on August 19, 2020 at 5:36 pm

          https://spacenews.com/arecibo-damage-to-take-months-to-repair/
          “A cable that is part of a system that suspends an observing platform above the telescope’s 305-meter primary dish broke in the early morning hours of Aug. 10. A section of cable fell to the dish below and created a gash about 30 meters long. The incident also damaged the platform itself.

          Johnson said that the cable, about 7.5 centimeters in diameter, did not itself snap. Instead, the cable came out of its socket on one of three support towers surrounding the dish.” (My italics.)



  11. ats on August 18, 2020 at 10:59 am

    The end of the cable is actually melted. You can see that the strands were fused together.



    • Randy on August 18, 2020 at 12:59 pm

      Lol maybe “they” whoever “they” are R hiding what’s going UP or WHAT is coming down ? “what” IS going On UP/OUT there ?? missing $$$ ?????? It sure IS getting/got the feel of someone/something IS …in a hurry !? I sure hope “they” aren’t PREDATORS mud mud Mud MUD !!! ????? ? or maybe just maybe there R Amazon Woman on the Moon ? ? umm leaning on the cable was cut ? & umm NOT
      Soooooo sure the new/ next Tower of Babel ….is over yet ? ( & YES I text/type THIS way on purpose) lmao ???



    • WalkingDead on August 18, 2020 at 1:36 pm

      With few exceptions (wear, corrosion, and sabotage), most cable failures occur at the fittings; the larger the cable the more this is true. This appears to be a cable/fitting interface failure to me.
      We can only guess at the nature of the failure, since we have no photo of the other end of the failure and no knowledge of what the fittings looked like or how the cable/fitting interfaces were designed.



  12. WalkingDead on August 18, 2020 at 8:46 am

    “An Astronomy magazine tally has found that more than 100 of Earth’s biggest research telescopes have closed in recent weeks due to the COVID-19 pandemic. What started as a trickle of closures in February and early March has become an almost complete shutdown of observational astronomy. And the closures are unlikely to end soon.”

    https://astronomy.com/news/2020/04/covid-19-forces-earths-largest-telescopes-to-close

    Rather than sabotage it, they could have just closed it like so many others. It seems there is more to this artificially intelligent, magical virus than meets the eye. Not only does it avoid riots and looters and live in churches, it apparently infests observatories as well.
    I find this rather curious.



    • zendogbreath on August 18, 2020 at 4:37 pm

      like button



      • KC Sali on August 18, 2020 at 9:23 pm

        I agree… Like button pushed!



    • zendogbreath on August 18, 2020 at 10:26 pm

      Reminded me. Sister in law worked at Savings and Load during the S&L crisis. While her branch was being audited – think it was early ’90’s – auditors were fairly abusive. She wasn’t sure what was going on until she waited at the copier while an auditor copied pages from one of the branches big heavy binders. Guy was hostile, slamming books around on this big expensive copying machine. She cautioned him about the machine. Stared her down, slammed the book down and drove it through the copier glass into the machine and walked away. I was already a cynic back then. She always thought I was conspiracy theorist ’till then. I had been telling her about Bush involvement among others. Feels like the entire system is being similarly crashed.



  13. anakephalaiosis on August 18, 2020 at 7:29 am

    VATICAN SWAMP MONSTER

    Pope Nero-Caligula is doing dishes,
    and smashing flying saucers,
    because hell is on fire
    in the quagmire,
    with swamp gas in trenches.

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/ccsirsai003ocg3/featherless-chicken.jpg



  14. DanaThomas on August 18, 2020 at 6:25 am

    Mynocks chewing on the cables?



    • Bizantura on August 18, 2020 at 10:20 am

      No, mynocks died together with everything else Star Wars.



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