Skip to main content

Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico suffers damage from broken cable

The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico suffered heavy damage on Monday, August 10, when an auxiliary cable above the reflector dish broke, according to the University of Central Florida. The falling cable ripped a 100-foot long tear in the dish, damaging some of the panels in the observatory’s Gregorian dish along the way.

The observatory is operated by UCF and is used for radar astronomy, participating in projects such as SETI@home, which is looking for signs of intelligent life in the cosmos.

Recommended Videos

The incident comes not long after Arecibo shut down for Tropical Storm Isaias, which ultimately passed by without damaging the observatory.

Following the storm, researchers at Arecibo studied Asteroid 2020 NK1, an asteroid “calculated to be one of the biggest threats out of all known asteroids on NASA’s list of potential impactors, with about one chance in 70,000 of impacting the Earth between 2086 and 2101,” according to NASA.

After taking measurements over the course of two and a half hours, the team at Arecibo was able to conclude that the asteroid would not pass close enough to the Earth to be a threat.

James Bond fans may recognize Arecibo as the villain Alec Trevelyan’s base in the climax of GoldenEye. It was also featured in the 1997 film Contact.

Despite its fame, Arecibo has faced not just environmental threats, but bureaucratic ones in the past. Prior to UCF’s involvement, budget concerns and damage from Hurricane Maria put the observatory’s operations in a precarious position.

Operations at Arecibo are currently halted until the damage can be repaired. No word yet on what causes the cable to break.

This is an ongoing story. We will update as new information becomes available.

Will Nicol
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Will Nicol is a Senior Writer at Digital Trends. He covers a variety of subjects, particularly emerging technologies, movies…
Next-gen laptops may have a weird mix of components
A Razer Blade 14 gaming laptop on a coffee table.

Many gamers are awaiting CES 2025 with a great deal of excitement. Not only are we said to be getting Nvidia's RTX 50-series, but we should also see some of the next-gen top gaming laptops make their debut during the event. However, according to a new leak, these next-gen laptops may not be so next-gen across the board. With a lot of processors to choose from, we might end up with configurations that focus on new GPUs while sticking to older CPUs.

Given that Intel is said to be launching the laptop versions of Arrow Lake in early 2025, and AMD is working on the Ryzen AI 300 Max, one would expect some beastly laptops to be unveiled at CES 2025, but Golden Pig Upgrade Pack on Weibo begs to differ. This news was first shared by VideoCardz. While this user has been a fairly reliable source of hardware leaks up until now, it's important to take it all with a bit of skepticism.

Read more
AMD may completely dominate CES 2025
AMD presenting its new Turin CPUs.

AMD might really go all-out during CES 2025 this January. According to a known leaker on the Chiphell forums, AMD is readying a slew of consumer products, ranging from more X3D desktop CPUs to handheld chips and RDNA 4 graphics cards. Here's what we have to look forward to.

The tantalizing bit of gossip comes from Zhangzhonghao, a leaker who's been known to discuss new releases ahead of time. Starting with laptops, AMD is reportedly set to release next-gen Kraken (or "Krackan" as referred to by this leaker) Point APUs alongside Ryzen AI Max (or Strix Halo) and, lastly, Fire Range CPUs.

Read more
AMD CEO teases RDNA 4 release as gaming revenue drops by 69%
AMD CEO Lisa Su delivering AMD's CES 2023 keynote.

There's been a lot of speculation about the potential release date for AMD's upcoming RDNA 4 graphics cards. Lisa Su, the CEO of AMD, has just put an end to most of these claims. While initial predictions pinned AMD's future best graphics cards at the end of 2024, AMD now confirms that RDNA 4 is on track to launch in early 2025. This announcement arrives alongside a steep decrease in AMD's gaming revenue.

AMD has been quiet about RDNA 4 (or RX 8000 series) for months, but we've seen many reports from various leakers who had something to say about the potential release date for these next-gen GPUs. At the beginning of 2024, these claims were fairly optimistic, with some leakers claiming that the AMD Radeon RX 8000 series might launch as early as this summer. That  did not happen, and as the months went by, many of them adopted a more conservative release window sometime in 2025. Now, thanks to AMD's third-quarter earnings call, we know that those later claims were correct.

Read more