Zinc creep in cable spelter sockets brought down the Arecibo telescope in 2020
Zinc creep in cable sockets caused the Arecibo telescope collapse, stressing material reliability for large hardware.
Why this scored 16
every term, weightedEngagement gained per hour since the last capture, against the fastest item on its own source
Whether that velocity is itself speeding up, as a per-hour rate
How many independent communities are talking about the same entity
Decays to zero over 14 days
Subtracted once something is big and old — we rank what's next, not what's peaked
Weights are hand-tuned, not learned — we're calibrating them against realized trends as history accumulates. On a topic's first sighting there's no previous reading to compare against, so acceleration starts from a neutral prior rather than a measurement, and velocity falls back to engagement over its whole lifetime until a second reading exists. Full methodology
Outlook
low confidence · estimate, not a guarantee7-day
~0
range 0–12
14-day
~0
range 0–14
30-day
~0
range 0–19
Signal history
7-day window (free)projected trajectory (estimate, not a guarantee)
Entities
Embed a live signal badge
[](https://www.signalcrest.app/topic/hn%3A50311045)
Drop this in a README or blog post — it updates automatically as the score moves.