Change rattles the world's biggest dish

All change at Arecibo:


Nature: Change rattles the world's biggest dish

After nearly half a century, Cornell University loses stewardship of the renowned Arecibo radio telescope


Keep searchin',
Martin


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Interesting! This story, along with the ATA going into hibernation will have a big affect on radio astronomy.

Hope SETI@home will still be able to piggyback to get its data.

John.
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That's exactly what it says. A new management team: Instead, the US National Science Foundation (NSF) has offered the job — and the US$41.2-million five-year contract that goes with it — to a consortium that includes SRI International, a non-profit research institute based in Menlo Park, California; the Universities Space Research Association in Washington DC; and the Metropolitan University in Puerto Rico.

Seti@home is not part of any of those groups. So it is very unlikely that the project will be affected.

Matt or Erick may be able to explain if this does have an effect. I hope to hear from them regarding this.
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"By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible". Hebrews 11.3

Interesting to see what ramifications this may have for S&H.
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Executive Director GPU Users Group Inc. -
brad@gpuug.org

They should have given the management to Berkeley...
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At the very least they should be an official partner.

At the very least they should be an official partner.

At the very least they should be an official partner.

As long as Berkely doesn't have to fund the maintenance for the telescope on the current budget. That could get very expensive.

Steve

At the very least they should be an official partner.

As long as Berkely doesn't have to fund the maintenance for the telescope on the current budget. That could get very expensive.

Steve

I am actually surprised they weren't even asked.

... Berkeley is doing the most productive and interesting thing of all with Arecibo.

... Berkeley is doing the most productive and interesting thing of all with Arecibo.

That may be true for possible/potential scientific impact and for public involvement. However, in the game of politics and funding I would guess the influence from s@h is disproportionately small...


It isn't that long ago that the NSF called for the closure of Arecibo... To keep going, staff were laid off and even the on-site canteen was closed.

So why do bureaucrats require a wake-up call from the rest of the world? Or is it all just a game of politics?


Hopefully, Arecibo will now benefit from renewed interest from this latest shake-up.

Keep searchin',
Martin

The NSF NEVER called for the closure for Arecibo. That is a common misconception. A few years ago, they just simply were about to run out of funding for the telescope. I wrote an article about that and the severe budget cuts and funding of the NSF in July 2008 (there was a thread about it here and a front page mention at the time, but I cannot locate that thread): Searching for asteroids, extraterrestrial life a little more rocky: Budget cuts threaten to close Arecibo, world's largest radio telescope

THE largest and most famous radio telescope in the world - the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico - is about to be upstaged. In a remote part of Guizhou province in southern China, construction has begun on a true behemoth of engineering, the Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), an instrument that promises to transform radio astronomy.

Closer to home, FAST will join the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. It will be able to study 5000 sun-like stars for alien transmissions. "FAST could detect a transmitter like the radar on the Arecibo dish at a distance of more than 1000 light years," says Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute.

Let us not forget the Square Kilometer Array project:
SKA
Its data should be processed by a grid called Skynet, based on a software called Nereus developed at Oxford University. But AFAIK, Nereus would run only on Macs and Linux PCs, thereby omitting all Windows users. Is this right? I, Linux user, believe it is not.
Tullio

Could be, only one platform to support...

See my preceding post about CERN. They support Scientific Linux only.
Tullio