Life in the Quiet Zone: West Virginia Town Avoids Electronics for Science
Neighbors of giant radio telescope give up wireless gadgets so astronomers can hear the music of the sphere
Sasha
Ingber
PUBLISHED OCTOBER 10, 2014
GREEN BANK, West Virginia—The barrage of noise and distractions
that are all but inescapable in most American communities is refreshingly
absent in this unassuming hamlet, located in the wooded hills of Pocahontas
County, four hours west of Washington, D.C. Here, no cell phones chirp or
jingle, and local kids aren't glued to the glowing screens of their mobile
devices. Older residents roll down their car windows to greet each other and
leave their front doors unlocked.
But Green Bank, population 143, isn't a
technological backwater. On the contrary, it is the proud home of one of
the marvels of the space age: the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope,
or GBT for short. Towering nearly 500 feet above its wide, green valley, with a
dish large enough to cradle a football field, the GBT is the world's biggest
fully steerable radio telescope—and one of the largest movable objects anywhere
on land. Locals jokingly refer to it as the Great Big Thing.
The GBT and other radio telescopes enable
astronomers to detect and study objects in space that give off little visible
light but emit naturally occurring radio waves—objects such as pulsars, gas
clouds, and distant galaxies.
Because of its vast size and sophisticated design, the GBT is
exquisitely sensitive to even the faintest radio pulses coming from space. For
the same reason, it is also extremely susceptible to electronic interference.
Any device that generates electromagnetic radiation—a cell phone, a television,
a wireless Internet router—can skew its data. And so the people who live in
these parts must, by law, forego some of the gadgets that most of us take for
granted.
Those restrictions began in the 1950s, when the Federal
Communications Commission created the National Radio Quiet Zone, a
13,000-square-mile swath of sparsely populated countryside that straddles the
borders of West Virginia, Virginia, and Maryland. Use of the airwaves inside
the zone is strictly regulated to ensure that the high-tech telescopes at Green
Bank and nearby Sugar Grove can
operate with minimal disturbance.
NG STAFF
Visitors to these mountain communities might assume that local
residents resent the lifestyle adjustments they have to make for the sake of
scientific research. But complaints are rarely voiced, and the area even
attracts people who are hypersensitive to electromagnetic energy.
"If you work in Green Bank, it's because you want this kind
of life," says Michael Holstine, business manager of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory,
which operates the GBT.
Holstine is quick to acknowledge the ironic aspects of working
at the facility: Scientists who use some of the world's most advanced instruments
can't use a microwave oven to heat their lunch. And then there was the time
astronomers were baffled by a mysterious distortion of their data. They had a
laugh when they discovered that the errant energy waves were coming from
battery-operated fans sold in the facility's gift shop.
Watch: The U.S. Town With No Cell Phones or Wi-Fi
Hearing Cosmic Whispers
Astronomers first tilted the GBT's giant ear toward the stars in
2000, and the cosmic whispers they've been hearing ever since have yielded
insights into the nature of the universe.
This past September, the GBT contributed to a staggering
discovery: Our Milky Way galaxy
is situated in a supercluster of galaxies 500 million
light-years in diameter, with a mass of 100 million billion suns.
Another project currently under way uses the GBT to search the
skies for primordial gas that formed as the universe cooled. Site director
Karen O'Neil, who keeps a green alien figurine on her desk, says maps of the
gas, used in conjunction with computer models, can help "determine where
theories of the creation and evolution of the universe are correct and where
they may need revision."
The GBT also recently detected a hydrogen cloud hurtling toward
the Milky Way at 150 miles a second, predicted to crash into our galaxy in
about 30 million years.
Haze on the Horizon
Two years ago, a different type of cloud cast a shadow over
Green Bank's future. The National Science Foundation (NSF) has been the sole
source of funding for the giant telescope ever since its steel parts were
ordered. In 2012 the NSF, facing tighter budgets and changing priorities, asked
an independent panel of astronomers to study its facilities and offer ideas for
trimming costs.
The committee
recommended shuttering the GBT and nine other telescopes over a
period of years to free up funds for research grants and future facilities,
such as a new telescope under
construction in Hawaii that will be used to study the sun.
"This is not the only facility with some unique view of
sky," said Harvard astronomer Daniel Eisenstein, who
chaired the committee.
Holstine and his staff were dumbfounded by the panel's
recommendation. "There were assumptions made about the capabilities of the
GBT that are not correct," he says, adding that experiments that take an
hour with the GBT could take hundreds of times longer with other telescopes.
Repercussions would also be felt on the ground. The observatory
is one of the largest employers in the county, drawing scientists and tourists
from around the world and generating almost $29 million in revenue each year
for West Virginia.
The possibility of that loss concerns many Green Bank residents,
including Sheriff David Jonese. His officers communicate by radio on a
frequency that doesn't interfere with the observatory, but they can't use
mobile computers in their cars to run background checks.
Still, Jonese prefers to operate the old-fashioned way.
"What the Quiet Zone and observatory bring to this community . . . I'd
much rather have that than what the communication brings."
To keep the GBT up and running, the NSF is looking for partners
to share its $10 million annual operating costs. So far, West Virginia
University has chipped in a million dollars. But at the moment it's impossible
to see what lies over the horizon for the telescope and its home in Green Bank.
Follow Sasha Ingber on Twitter.
I have personally witnessed misconduct on the part of both Holstine and Jonese. Moreover, the radio-free zone is not protected. The laws are regularly violated by the aforementioned and others. The Smart Grid has been installed and is transmitting throughout Green Bank.
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