Well…I know that in this time of rampant hunger and the looming eviction crisis, to think about science and figuring out a way to fund it is pretty far down on any list until we get this country back up and running again…but, I had a thought today after the sad news that the rest of the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico collapsed over the weekend and took the support towers down with it….so, there is nothing left but a pile of aluminum panels and cables that used to support the science instruments…and that thought is to fund a  replacement by selling off the damaged panels in 6inch by 6inch pieces for 20 bucks each…I would buy one of those and turn it into a display to sit in my living room…and since you could get almost half a million or more of them out of a dish that size, that would give you seed money of 10 million dollars to start to replace it and when it was done, you could point to the new one and know you had a part in furthering science in the world. There are times when we need a distraction from what is happening in the world and when we can find something that makes us smile and forget for just a few minutes, we need to allow ourselves to do it…and not feel guilty about it.

Well…okay, this one is a little different in that Arecibo is not a person but is the iconic radio telescope nestled in the hills of Puerto Rico…over the past couple of months, support cables for the receivers that hang above the dish have failed…the first dropping a receiver through the dish and putting a 30 foot hole in it…but the final blow came when another support cable failed and the people in charge have determined that trying to repair it is too dangerous so the telescope will be dismantled instead. For 57 years, this telescope has been on the forefront of deep space exploration…and I’m sure you’ve seen it in the many movies and tv shows it was featured in and I even used it in my first novel as a setting for one of the characters home base. It is always a sad day for us nerds when an iconic part of our nerd world is gone but 57 years is a darn good run for any piece of technology….my only concern is that with the death of this telescope, too much of the essential research that is done to just figure out our universe will be lost since it appears that the politicians (repubs) will only support it if it can be immediately monetized…but that’s not how science works…it always pays off but many times it’s not the put money in and get money out linear progress mistake that is expected…isn’t just figuring something out about the universe reward enough? RIP Arecibo…