Uncovering the Cause: Analyzing the Arecibo Collapse

Forensic analysis of the Arecibo radio telescope collapse has identified bad sockets as the main cause of the failure. The investigation revealed that the manual and inconsistent splay of the wires during cable socketing led to shear stress, causing the molten zinc "spelter socket" to slowly flow around the cable strands and allowing them to slip out of the surrounding steel socket. While there were multiple causes for the collapse, being able to attribute the bulk of the failure to a single defect provides valuable lessons for preventing future failures of cable-supported structures.