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Language: en

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Tucked away in a valley in the Allegheny Mountains
in West Virginia, is this:

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the Green Bank Radio Telescope,

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the largest steerable radio telescope
in the world.

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Now if you're building an optical telescope,

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something that looks at the stars,

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then you want to be on top of a mountain,

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you want to get through as much of Earth's
atmosphere as you can.

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But a radio telescope needs to be isolated

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from all the radio noise that humanity produces.

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Now, one way is to build it in the middle
of a load of mountains.

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Solid rock does a pretty good job of shielding.

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But another way is to get everyone around
you to just shut up.

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Welcome to the National Radio Quiet Zone.

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...er, this is where I would have used a big,
sweeping drone shot

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to get a dramatic picture.

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But remote control isn't allowed here.

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The job of the Green Bank telescope is actually
really, really flexible,

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from looking at objects in the solar system

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to looking at objects halfway across the universe
and further.

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It was instrumental in uncovering the molten
core of Mercury.

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It helped resolve a sort of controversy in
astronomy

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about the distance to a nearby star cluster.

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And that might sound a little bit mundane,

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but measuring distances in astronomy is very
hard.

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And one of the biggest projects the telescope
does right now

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is also looking for living things out there
in space.

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It’s called the Breakthrough Listen project,

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and it’s a search for extraterrestrial intelligence
using the Green Bank telescope

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and other facilities like it throughout the
world.

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The Quiet Zone is roughly a rectangle,

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about 100 miles on each side.

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And since 1958,

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the US Government has put strict limits on
transmissions within the Zone.

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Partly for this telescope, and partly because
of a much more secure military facility

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thirty miles away that listened to
more earthly communications.

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Some folks writing about the Quiet Zone,

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they say that all transmissions are banned
for the whole hundred miles,

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but that's not true: there are cities within
the wider parts of the Zone,

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and the folks there happily use
wifi and cell phones.

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It's the Quiet Zone, not the Silent Zone.

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Out there, the rules are about big transmitters,

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the kind that put out TV and radio signals:

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they're required to use low-powered,

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directional antennas rather than just spraying
signal everywhere.

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Within ten miles of here, though,

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the rules start becoming a bit more strict.

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This telescope is sensitive enough that,

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if it was pointed the right way,

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it could pick up a signal with the equivalent
energy of one snowflake hitting the ground.

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And even if it's not pointed right at you,

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it's got two acres of surface area

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to hear your phone screaming for cell towers
that just aren't there.

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Living in a place without a cell phone is
definitely an interesting change.

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Before two years ago, I did have a cell phone,

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could look up anything I wanted on Google.

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You know, after a week of living here?

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I didn’t even really notice it.

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The only difference is that you have to plan
things ahead more

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if you want to go out with your friends — you
plan in advance,

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or you say “I’ll meet up with them when
I meet up with them”.

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Things like that.

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And many, many people have come and gone,

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stayed for weeks or months at a time,

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and really none of them have ever said
“man, I really miss my cell phone”.

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In the nearby town of Green Bank,
anything that transmits,

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whether it’s baby monitors
or wireless doorbells, is banned.

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So is anything that might cause interference.

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Microwave ovens aren’t allowed.

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Power lines have to be buried
four feet underground.

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The observatory buildings near the telescope
are huge Faraday cages,

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keeping all the emissions inside.

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So this is the anechoic chamber
that I test in.

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I first test the device itself to see what
the emissions are,

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then design a box for it,
put it back in the
chamber,

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and see if I did a good job or not.

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Things like cameras, for instance,

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need to see high frequency
electromagnetic energy, namely light,

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and yet we’re trying to keep them from emitting
lower frequency electromagnetic energy.

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Usually we use a mesh embedded in glass
that’s very fine,

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and so it doesn’t distort the image too
much.

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Once you're within a mile of the telescope,

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the restrictions are so severe that only
diesel cars are allowed.

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Regular gasoline cars: they cause too much
interference from the spark plugs inside.

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Folks who say they're hypersensitive to
electromagnetic fields move to this area:

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and even if pretty much all the evidence says
it's in their heads,

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they still feel better for being here.

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The scientists, however,
have more practical concerns.

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Mostly my work here deals with
radio-frequency interference on site,

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and also doing routine runs to see
if there’s anything new out there.

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We have a monitoring station down on site,

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and then we’ll jump in the truck.

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And we have direction finding equipment
in the truck.

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We just basically have to look at it with
the receiver and the spectrum analyser

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and just drive around and watch
the signal peak or fall away.

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It is getting more difficult.

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Because there’s more and more
wireless stuff out there.

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The wireless genie is out of the bottle.

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And there’s so many things out there —

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the Internet of Things is creeping into almost
every device.

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Refrigerators now have hotspots in them.

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When we go around and scan for wi-fi hotspots,

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there’s always three or four printers out
there.

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The strangest one I’ve heard of
was an electric pad in a doghouse.

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There was some arcing inside the pad,

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and it was generating a lot of RFI, so…

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My predecessor’s the one that found that
one,

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and they fixed it by buying the guy a new
heater for the doghouse!

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Thank you to everyone at the
Green Bank Observatory

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and all the staff at the radio telescope.

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I am kind of overwhelmed to be up here,

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I am so grateful to all of them,

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please, pull down the description,

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check out the links, and go see what they
do.