Arecibo Zine

 

In the cavalcade of calamity that was 2020, the loss of the Arecibo Radio Telescope might feel like a trivial pile-on. No lives were lost when it collapsed. No government was upended. No rage-inducing injustice was perpetrated. No human rights were violated. On December 1st, a cable just snapped and the telescope's receiver came crashing to the ground, ending more than five decades of work.

A combination of hurricanes and earthquakes had damaged the installation beyond repair between 2017 and 2020. Once engineers determined it was too far gone to be saved, the site was set to be decommissioned. So, I knew it was coming. Still, the video of the cable snapping and the receiver falling like a special effects shot in a disaster movie felt like one heartbreak too many at the end of the year.

We've had to sit and watch so much of the world collapse this year. Not this, too. 

I first became aware of the Arecibo Observatory through an album recorded by Lustmord. I'm a sucker for music made from deep space radio wave recordings, so "Trans Plutonian Transmissions" was an easy purchase. That record started my decades-long admiration for the Arecibo telescope and project. My ears perked up whenever I heard it mentioned. It stood out as the kind of preposterously huge and complicated kind of project that human beings seem to have forgotten they are capable of. I always wanted to visit.

And now, like so many people and ideas and institutions, it has been lost. It seems that we're losing the battle on every front. That the Earth couldn't let stand this massive feat of human engineering--inspired by hope and wonder about the universe--seems to signal something dire.

We have other telescopes. Bigger ones, even. And we're launching a giant new telescope into space sometime soon. So there's hope. Still, this hurts and it is the unfortunately on-the-nose capper to a truly terrible year for humanity.

I've printed 10 copies of a small Arecibo Zine in remembrance. It's a small, futile gesture, but it feels necessary.