There are many amazing things in Puerto Rico and one of them is the technologically (and I would add, aesthetically) stunning Arecibo Observatory, which was featured prominently in the Jodi Foster movie, Contact. Due to massive funding cuts, its future is threatened. This is a site of great scientific and cultural importance for PR, so I really hope they manage to find the funding that will make it survive far into the future.
There is a facebook group
(by the name of “Do NOT close the Arecibo Observatory: Earth’s largest radiotelescope”) opposing the closure but I don’t yet know of any other site for halting the cuts. I will post one once I do.
And if we lose the observatory, we might sadly lose another fine creature, the mysterious chupacabra who apparently was first called into his goat sucking action thanks to the great observatory of ours, which does send signals to find alien life.
So sans Arecibo, we lose a great scientific instrument and may lose the beloved mascot of goat terror, the Chupacabra 
No!!! Not the Chupacabras!!!
Comment by voxstefani — September 15, 2007 @ 12:35 pm
Hmmm… does the fact that its current funders feel it’s not worth funding (at least not in full) just mean that it’s scientifically not very useful anymore?
Comment by Karl Fogel — September 15, 2007 @ 10:44 pm
That is a good question that is skirted by the articles. i have been a few times and know of a few grad students who have done work there and it seems like it is fairly busy on the side of research activities. But more information and a more central website about why the Radiotelescope is important is needed; not just a facebook group
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Comment by Biella — September 16, 2007 @ 2:49 am
Heh. Well, I would think if you have this huge radiotelescope just sitting there, you’ll always be able to find researchers willing to use it. For the researcher, the investment is just the opportunity cost of whatever else they might have been doing (for example, if they couldn’t get time on any better telescope, then Arecibo is certainly better than nothing).
So I would expect it to be busy 24/7, but that is not in itself an indication that it’s important in the general scheme of things. That is, the opportunity cost of funding it may be too high for the funders, because the funders have to compare Arecibo with every other thing they could possibly be funding (in other words, with everything), whereas the researchers who end up there at any given time only have to compar with the other research they could have been doing (considerably less than everything, because telescope time and other factors are in short supply anyway).
Comment by Karl Fogel — September 16, 2007 @ 9:09 pm