alt Hacker Newsnot good, not good at all, as this is how ALL bridges and towers are supported, the basic engineering bieng that any cable end will be stronger than the cable itself and will last longer than the cable itself, except now, when it isn't, not good, not easy to inspect, not easy to service.
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My guess is the safety factor here was lower than typical, causing the failure mode to occur.
I expect future bridges will design these joints even more conservatively because they were skating closer to the edge than they realized.
They also mentioned that this is the first example of the unknown phenomena that caused the creep. This technology has been in use quite successfully for more than 100 years.
This would predict that we should be seeing far more mystery collapses than we do though
Bridges probably shouldn't be subject to the same electromagnetic radiation that gets focused by the telescope though so ideally not a problem there.
> Long-term low-current electroplasticity, induced by the electromagnetic waves from the Arecibo telescope itself, may have sped up the zinc creep, it says.
I presume we aren't using most bridges as interstellar antennas.