yo peeps
I hear buzz about fateful decisions on NAIC/Arecibo from NSF.
But... can't confirm anything.
Who knows, and who will tell?
PS: thanks to our intrepid commenter and other confirming sources...
Cornell did lose their bid.
Arecibo is being taken over by
"SRI" which is a in consortium of USRA - Universities Space Research Association a venerable and DC institutional consortium, and the University of Puerto Rico.
What I hear so far sounds good, I think they will run Arecibo and do it well.SRI appears not to have a web site yet, the consortium have started to staff up. (see comments that SRI)
but they
No word on what staff changes (ie cuts - I'm figuring SRI's bid was low)(see below comment 3) there will be, yet.
USRA runs Sofia among its other activities... ;-)
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From a reliable senior source at Arecibo:
"Cornellâs proposal to manage NAIC and the
Observatory was not successful. SRI International in partnership with some other institutions will take over the management of NAIC and the Observatory."
thanks, got it confirmed independently
While better known as a radio astronomy observatory, Arecibo was originally built as an incoherent scatter radar facility. SRI currently operates incoherent scatter radars at Poker Flat, Alaska,Sondrestromfjord, Greenland and Resolute Bay, Canada. SRI International in Menlo Park, CA is the lead partner in the consortium, along with USRA and UPR. NSF ATM will increase its Arecibo funding to partially compensate for decreased NSF AST funding. SRI has claimed that staff reductions will primarily be at Cornell (NAIC) rather than the observatory itself.
Ah, THAT SRI - Stanford Research Institute - hadn't thought of them, thought SRI was the new consortium name. Makes sense.
The Puerto Rico partner is Universidad Metropolitana, part of the Ana G. Mendez University System. UPR was a Cornell partner in the competition.
Steinn and others,
a bit OT , but here is an interesting talk on future frontiers in astrophysics for young researchers
http://online.kitp.ucsb.edu/online/colloq/loeb1/
What do you think (such a talk was first given in a conference banquet at PSU.)
UPR is also an important team member with the SRI/USRA/UMET consortium. The current intentions are to establish joint faculty appointments between the Arecibo Obseratory and two UPR campus.