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Comment by dylan604 | Hacker News Reader

Why does its age come in to play? The think they are listening to is old too. The main thing is the size of the dish that allows for it, and then the skills of the operators to find the weak signal in the noise.

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Stuff breaks. Keeping it functional for a long time is impressive.

Arecibo failed to do so.

Indeed, it has been decommissioned for some 20 odd years now. But it's kept up and running by volunteers and became a national monument.

What's been decommissioned for 20 years now? I'm not really sure where you get your information from, but it's clearly not correct.

Decommissioned Announced November 19, 2020 Collapsed December 1, 2020

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_Telescope

They were referring to Dwingeloo [1] in the Netherlands, the telescope used in this article, not Arecibo. It stopped officially operating as a radio telescope in 2000, and has since been used for a variety of astronomy and amateur radio projects.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwingeloo_Radio_Observatory

Because the object you are receiving a signal from is further, thus necessitating more sensitive receiving equipment that couldn't have existed in the past?

I don’t buy that premise at all.

Superconducting detectors and materials science have obviously advanced leaps and bounds in the last 30 years: it's really not up for debate or a premise that can be "bought."

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