Puerto Rico is home to the largest, most sensitive radio telescope in the world. For more than 40 years, the Arecibo Observatory has measured the motions of galaxies, mapped the surface of Venus, studied the physics of pulsars, and listened for signals from extraterrestrial life.
The 1,000-foot-wide dish, which rests in a natural sinkhole, consists of 40,000 aluminum panels (1) that form a radio-reflective surface. The panels gather radio waves from the sky and focus them onto a feed antenna (2) that amplifies the signals and sends them to a control room where data are analyzed…