Astronomers unlikely victims of Mexico’s violence and crime
- Workers at massive telescopes in remote areas are getting robbed and carjacked on the way to work, officials say, forcing one observatory to cut staff
Astronomers have become the latest victims of Mexico’s violence with activities at two observatories being reduced because their staff suffered crimes while travelling to the remote mountain sites, researchers said on Thursday.
The problems occurred near the Alfonso Serrano Large Millimetre Telescope, or LMT, in the central Mexico state of Puebla. It is the world’s largest single-dish steerable millimetre-wavelength telescope and is jointly run by the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Mexico’s national institute of astrophysics.
LMT “has reduced its scientific activities to a minimum level due to the security problems in the region surrounding the telescope”, said university spokesman Ed Blaguszewski.
“The University of Massachusetts Amherst has suspended travel of UMass personnel to the LMT site,” he said. “We have retained security consultants to advise us on security risks in the area and strategies to deal with these risks.”
Mexico’s astrophysics institute said “the unsafe conditions that prevail in the region are well known and public”.