January 13, 2026 • 50 mins
West Virginia is home to sensitive radio telescopes that could easily pick up your cell phone’s signal on Mars. And the cell reception on Mars is about as good as it is in the NRQZ, since cell towers are banned in the interest of furthering astronomy.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too, and really quiet You're on
stuff you should know because we're doing an episode on
the National Radio Quiet Zone. We're not a radio show,
we're a podcast, but we feel in solidarity that we
should be quiet.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
To that's right. And we're not talking about Palm Springs
with their oppressive band on outdoor music.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Oh, I hadn't heard about that.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Yeah, you can't play music outside like by your pool.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Huh at all?
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Supposedly at all?
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Well, I guess it probably just depends on your neighbor.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
I think they're pretty strict about it. I mean, I've
never been to Palm Springs and stayed there. We should
ask our friend who lives there. Yeah, because maybe full
time residents have a little more leeway. But you know,
they do it because people. They don't want people just
going and renting houses and just blowing out the neighborhood
every weekend.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
No, this is in Fire Island, guys. No, that we're
not talking about Palm Springs, though, I guess is the
upshot of that, right.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
No, we're talking about the opposite of Palm Springs, which
is Appalachia.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
West Virginia. Yeah, is kind of the opposite of Palm Springs,
if there is such a thing. I think even if
you folded the United States map in half, they would
be pretty close to one another. They would smear one another.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Someone's going to do that. Yeah, they're going to fold
a map up and send us a correction.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Yeah, they'll be like Josh's way off.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Well, you know where they might fold a map up
is in the National Radio Quiet Zone because they still
use those things.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
It's a great place to fold a map because yeah,
like you said, that's what you need to get around
in a lot of cases. Let's just cut to the
chase here, Chuck. The National Radio Quiet Zone does not
mean you can't play your music like that. They're saying
that this is an area where radio emissions of any
are heavily regulated, frowned upon, you might even say. And
(02:04):
the whole reason they're doing this is to protect the
delicate telescopes radio telescopes, Houston radioed astronomy at a specific
place called Green Bank, West Virginia. They've established a whole
zone around it that's meant to block out or keep
out radio transmissions so that the astronomers can go about
(02:26):
their business happily.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
That's right. And to be clear, when you say radio transmissions,
you're not talking about Casey Casem's American Top forty, right,
because we don't have a time machine and we're not
going to exhuom Casey Casem.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
They still play those likes on some radio stations on
Saturday or Sunday. It's a great way to pass some
time if you're driving.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
I've stumbled upon those and it is a nice time
capsule for sure. But you're talking about radio waves, and
we're gonna explain kind of about what radio astronomy is
and all that. In fact, we can go ahead and
do that right now, because in nineteen thirty two there
was an engineer at Bell Lab's named Karl Janski who
noticed some static interfering with some communications going across the pond,
(03:10):
as they say, got together with an astronomer over coffee
and they said, you know what, I don't think this
is interference coming from here on Earth. I think it's
coming from out in the Milky Way galaxy. And this
was a big deal in nineteen thirty two, They were like,
there are literal celestial bodies emitting radioaves out there, and
we need to start studying these and measuring these, and
(03:33):
we're going to call it radio astronomy.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Yeah, all of a sudden, we didn't just have visible
telescopes anymore. We had radio telescopes, which are very similar.
I mean, they both are just measuring different parts of
the electromagnetic spectrum. That's basically it. But the really amazing
thing about what some of these radio telescopes can do,
just to give you an idea of how sensitive they are,
(03:58):
they measure the incoming radio waves that are so weak.
They measure them in micro jant skis, which is a point.
What a micro jant Ski point?
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Is it named after Carl?
Speaker 2 (04:14):
It is named I hope so because that would be
one heck of a coincidence. Yeah, it's point. It's zero
point thirty two zeros. Wow, this is the watts, by
the way, So the electrical energy is so weak, it'so
point thirty two zeros of a single watt, right, and
I've seen it compared to a snowflake hitting the ground
(04:38):
carries a lot more energy than that. So that's how
faint some of these radio signals are, and that's how
sensitive these enormous radio telescopes are, which is why the
idea of having a quiet zone around a telescope is
so vital. Because there's so much noise in modern life.
It's just gotten worse and worse and wors. You can
(05:00):
find radio interference and everything from bulldozers to power lines,
Wi Fi routers, Christmas lights, spark plugs, and cars produce
a lot of radio interference. It's everywhere, which means then
that if you want to create a quiet zone, you
have to somehow regulate all this stuff to kind of
keep it away from the radio telescopes, which has proven
(05:23):
difficult over the years for the National Radio Quiet Zone.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
You mentioned the less than a Why do they have names?
I know there's like megawatts and killowatts and all that stuff, gigawatts.
Do they have names for things less than a w
or is micro janski?
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Is a janski is like point twenty six zeros of
one single watt?
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Well, I just meant a sort of a regular interval
like a something watt like a reggie watch.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Oh, I'm sure there's like a milliwat. I know there is.
I've heard that word before. I know I was at
a mixer of some sort and someone used that word.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Okay, I got you. You miss my joke.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Oh well I need to hear it. I gotten.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
No, I'm going I'm gonna let you hear it in
QA when you listen to it.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
So great, I have a future humiliation ahead of No.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
No, no no. It was very quick and it was
a pretty lame set up by me because it was
all just for that dumb joke. So you have it,
when hester I to look forward to.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
I can't wait to hear it.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Something that you've said though a few times that we
want to again just sort of hammer home. You've said,
like a lot of noise and you might hear like
silence and things like that. Again, it has nothing to
do with sound. We're just talking about radio waves, which
are you know, they cast a kind of light like
a radio light, but it's not something that the human
eye can see. So again, not actual sound is what
(06:44):
we're talking about.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
No, nor actual visible light radio light. Right, So like
what I was saying, it's like radio light pollution is
absolutely everywhere, and yet they're trying to keep it as
quiet as possible. In the national radio Quiet it used
to be a lot easier when they started this whole thing,
you said, Karl Jansky made that massive monumental discovery in
(07:08):
nineteen thirty two. By nineteen fifty four, the National Science
Foundation started exploring, like how to just take radio astronomy
to the next level, which is I guess you would
say the second level because it was still so new.
They created the Advisory Panel on Radio Astronomy, and part
of what they were discussing was how to create a
(07:31):
quiet zone and where you would make one of those things.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Yeah, I mean, I can't imagine if they had were
tasked with this today, it'd probably be nearly impossible. They'd
have to use imminent domain just to kick people out.
But nineteen fifty four, like you said, it was a
little bit easier. So for a couple of years they
got together over coffee about where they could put this thing.
It needed minimal radio noise, obviously, like we talked about,
(07:55):
probably a pretty limited population. By the way, thanks for
Anna for this when she did a great job on this.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Yeah, she really did.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Surrounded by mountains because mountains provide a natural barria for
those radio signals, and probably not near a city, but
not too far from Washington, d C. Where things would
likely be headquartered. So they finally looked around. They settled
on the Appalachian Mountains between Virginia and West Virginia. That
(08:24):
is part one of solving the problem. Part two was
getting funding. Luckily, President Eisenhower was kind of into this,
so in nineteen fifty six he asked Congress back when
that was a thing, for seven million dollars to fund
a radio astronomy center, and Congress said, yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Yeah, everybody was really jazzed about this new radio astronomy stuff. Right.
West Virginia was very flattered, and they the state legislature
passed the West Virginia Radio Astronomy Zone. So the first
thing that was created was the National Radio Quiet Zone
and that was actually created before the National Radio Quiet Zone.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Yeah, they kind of laid the groundwork, I feel like.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Yeah, they laid a ten mile diameter groundwork around wherever
this telescope was going to be built. They said, wherever
you put it, there's going to be ten miles around
it where you can't use radio stuff, right, Yeah. And
then the FCC said we're going to do one better.
We're going to put another blanket layer much larger layer
(09:27):
called the National Radio Quiet Zone on top of the
West Virginia Radio Astronomy Zone to kind of make this
huge buffer, right, to make it even harder for radio
signals to mess with the radio telescopes in the West
Virginia Radio Astronomy Zone.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
That's right. So that smaller n RQZ, the National Radio
Quiet Zone had from the jump, had some looser restrictions
than the even much smaller WVRAZ. It covered a much
larger area, about thirteen thousand square miles. But think of
(10:04):
it this way. It's really a rectangle, the NRQZ thirteen
thousand square miles across the Virginia and West Virginia and
a little bit of Maryland, the southernmost tip on that
western panhandle, just a tip. It's very mountainous. It's got
parts of the Allegheny, parts of the Blue Ridge Mountains,
but mainly the Appalachian Mountains. And within that thirteen thousand
(10:27):
square mile rectangle, you've got that West Virginia the wv RIZ.
In the center of that, you've got a two mile
zone that surrounds Green Bank, West Virginia. And every time
you go into a smaller circle within that rectangle. It
gets more and more restrictive as for what kind of
(10:48):
radio noise that you can have, because in the middle
of that zone you've got the Green Bank Observatory and
they have even more restrictions right there in the center.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Yeah, at the Green Bank observd to you can't even
think about using any kind of radio creating device because
that would create radio waves.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
If you think about Wi Fi there that you're fired.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Yeah, you fired. If you're lucky, they'll really work you
over there. They've got a gang of goons that enforced
this with the iron fist. So we talked about how
all of this. The quiet zone itself was established. Simultaneously,
they're working on creating the actual observatory that's going to
be in the middle of this quiet zone, and initially
(11:31):
it was called the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in that
town of Green Bank, which is in the center of
the West Virginia Radio Astronomy Zone that was established in
nineteen fifty six, and they started building telescopes, one bigger
than the other. They started with the toattele eighty five
foot back and then the three hundred foot telescope. They
(11:51):
go one hundred and forty foot telescope, which are very
boring names, but originally, as you might imagine, everybody is
sociated with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory lived in this
ultra quiet zone around the observatory, and they ran into
some early problems where the employees are like, we can't
(12:12):
live here.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Sorry right, yeah, I mean they said, you know, the
medical care and access to great healthcare is an awesome
the schools here aren't great for my kids, and so
they relocated the admin headquarters to the University of Virginia
and Charlottesville. The researchers remained there on site in eighty eight,
(12:33):
and I think that was in nineteen sixty five when
they built most of this stuff, those big tall towers.
In eighty eight, the three hundred foot telescope collapsed. The
one hundred and forty foot said ha ha, But then
it was replaced by the Robert C. Bird Green Bank
Telescope in two thousand and one, which still stands today
and not only stands, but it's like it is the
(12:55):
largest fully steerable radio telescope in the world with get this,
a two point three acre dish and almost five hundred
feet four hundred and eighty five feet, which is twenty
one and sixteen big macs.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Is it?
Speaker 1 (13:09):
That's all for you, my friend?
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Thank you buddy. Wow, that was a delightful little line yap.
What alan yap? We've talked about this before. Oh remind
me a lane yap is just like a little something extra, Okay,
and I find it incredibly obnoxious to use.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Well, I think it's great and it sure beats the
heck out of a cherry on top.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Alright, let's come out with something else.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
The lineyap on top.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Okay, there you go. There's one other thing that the
Green Bank telescope, the one that's currently in use, can
boast you ready for this? Yes, it has the world's
largest ball bearing. Oh wow, the ball bearing inside of
this thing that this massive telescope steers on.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
I can't wait.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Seventeen and a half feet in diameter, wow, which means
it's as big a as a male adult giraffe is tall.
That's the best I could come up. I know it's awful,
it's clumsy, but I could not come up with anything else.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Hey, Alexa, what's seventeen feet tall?
Speaker 2 (14:17):
I asked Duck Dunco instead.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Okay, and I'm sorry for everyone who's Alexi? Just triggered Alexa?
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Alexa, Alexa play one direction?
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Oh boy, that's good.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
You want to take a break while everybody's trying to
turn off one direction?
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Yeah, let's take a break. We'll be right back.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
You came along and it was like, yeah, well we.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Were work pals, all right. So within that thirteen thousand
square mile rectangle, the National Radio Quite Zone, you cannot
and this is where the restrictions begin, and we're gonna
get more granular. You can't have any fixed or permanent
transmitters installed unless you get approval from the NRQZ and
(15:28):
the FCC.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
What's the NTIA, the National Telecommunications and Information Agency, Very obscure,
but they supposedly are replacing FEMA as the new World
orders jack boot troops.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Okay, good to know. So you can't build any big,
permanent things there. So that means just within that big
thirteen thousand square mile rectangle, just somebody living there doesn't
have to worry too much. That means that no company
can come in and build something really.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Big, right, That's really what we're looking at here. If
you're in the actual thirteen thousand square mile thing, you
don't have to really worry about a cell phone. The
thing is that also means since there's no cell phone
towers that are allowed there, your cell phone's going to
be useless in a lot of places. I think that's
(16:23):
fair enough to expect anyway, because Pocahontas County, which is
where a lot of the main part, which is definitely
where Green Bank is, I think three quarters of it
is national and state protected wilderness. So you're not going
to expect to get a cell phone signal there anyway.
And if you're passing through this area, you're probably going
to the quiet zone on purpose, so you can expect this.
(16:47):
It's really just an issue if you actually live or
work in this area, or you're a company trying to
set up new infrastructure. That's really who's being affected by this.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Yeah, for sure if you read and I had heard
of this before at some point, like I saw some
news reporter read an article that portray it as like,
you know, it's like going back in time basically, And
we'll get to the ways that it is sort of
like that, but it's not entirely like that. They've never
entirely banned any kind of radio transmission. It's just really
(17:18):
regulated like they have certain radio broadcasts because they have
to have those emergency transmissions that we talked about in
Communications in the Am Radio episode. Those have always been there.
You can have TV. It is restricted, but they permit
like cable TV and even satellite TV, which kind of
surprises me. Yeah, and Wi Fi was not available for
(17:40):
a long long time until I think just last year.
But they could have wired internet with the Ethernet cable right.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
If it was wired, no problem, But the Wi Fi
was going to produce a lot of problems because you're
I mean, that's a your routers, a radio transmitter. So yeah,
Apparently a lot of people, as we'll see, are like,
well whatever, I'm still going to have Wi Fi, including
Green Bank Observatory employees who live there. But it's still
(18:09):
it's a big problem because if you live in that region,
it still affects you in all sorts of ways. Like
an It gives the example of if your car breaks down,
you don't just call somebody on the cell phone be
like I need a toe, Sure you're walking unless somebody
friendly drives by who you know and trust. They probably
(18:30):
had dinner at their house and will give you a
ride to somewhere. People use payphones. As we'll see, you
can definitely feel disconnected just from not having cell service,
let alone from Wi Fi. But that said, I think
we'll talk a little more about it later. But the
people who work for Green Bank Observatory try to work
(18:51):
with the community because although technically it's law that they
can regulate this and punish people who violate these rules, don't.
They are trying to keep a happy relationship with the
community and figure out compromises that work for everybody. That's
kind of that's what they try to do. I think
if you talk to some of the people who live
around there or elected officials around there, they might not
(19:16):
necessarily agree with you, But that seems to be at
least the mission of the Green Bank Observatory.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Yeah, and again that's specifically the Green Bank, which is
the most restrictive area where you're not gonna have any
cell service and like I said, until very recently, no
Wi Fi at all. There like no Bluetooth devices, no
RC cars and trucks for the kids and playful adults,
no microwaves. But like you said, I think you hinted
(19:43):
at it a lot of people or some people, because
there's not a lot of people there period, but some
people move there for that reason. They want a simpler lifestyle,
they want less technology. And we'll talk a little bit
more about, you know, kind of some of the people
that attracts because it can get very interesting, other peop
people can get annoyed. Most people there probably just you know,
(20:04):
that's where they've always lived and so that's just the deal.
It's a way of life. I think in twenty sixteen
that was an Italian graduate student named Jeffrero Carlini who
traveled there to study like the people and were like,
you know, what's it like for the people that live there?
And he found and this is a very small scale study.
It wasn't like the most robust scientific thing, but I
(20:26):
think just walking around and studying and talking to people,
he found that people seem to have lower anxiety there.
But it's different. You know, they use maps, they use
payphones still, just.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
The idea of not having access to like social media,
and yeah, a lot just a lot of like modern
life or having a cell phone, like being able to
be contacted all the time. I can't help but think
that yes, you as a group would have less anxiety
on the.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Whole, especially teens. I think it was Australia. Didn't they
just pass a loss thing you couldn't be on social
media until you were a certain.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Age I think sixteen.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Hats off to you guys, because yeah, that's how it
should be. Teens there do have things like iPhones, they
can't use them for textra calls. So there was one
team that said, it's basically a clock and a calculator,
so imagine imagine calculator. Watches are very much in style.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Still, yeah, those cassio ones, Yeah, those are awesome. The
thing is is this is all I mean as of
last year I think, meaning twenty twenty five, but also
some changes really started to take place, I think in
the summer of twenty twenty four, like certain kinds of
Wi Fi is now allowed, and things are now changing.
(21:49):
I mean once you add widespread internet access, like the
world's going to change or this area is going to
change overnight. Basically the better writing imagine going right, Imagine
going from nineteen ninety seven to twenty twenty five in
this in the span of a day after installing a
(22:10):
Wi Fi router in your house.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Well, I mean that's one thing. Anna mentions sort of
at the end of her research was like there was
a while there where the Gulf was really big, like
when you know, for the longest time, it was like, well,
things aren't that much different, sure, but then once the
Internet came along and then they weren't getting things like
Wi Fi and Bluetooth, Like the golf got pretty wide
there for a while. But like we said, it attracts
(22:34):
a lot of interesting folks. There are certainly some some
conspiracy theorists that go there on purpose. The National Alliance
Headquarters for the Neo Nazis has been in Poconnas County
for a long time. Obviously you're gonna get some hippies,
some communes. There was a quasi cult perhaps called Zendic
(22:54):
Farm that was there for a little while. They kind
of moved all over I looked into them all over
the United States, but ended up there until one of
their dear leaders passed away in nineteen ninety nine. The
other errols In Dick, passed away in twenty twelve, so
that's when that kind of ended. And we'll talk about
this last group toward the end. But most famously it's
(23:16):
probably known and where you might have seen articles or
news reports people moving there that suffer from electromagnetic hypersensitivity.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Yeah. We'll talk a little bit more about that later, right. Yeah, So,
if you have heard about this, is a good chance
that you stumbled across a Wired article on it appropriately that.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Might have been where I read about it.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
There's a guy named Stephen Curzy who's an author. He's
a journalist who just kind of I was reading one
of his Wired articles and he was talking about how
he became kind of obsessed with the idea of living
without a phone. Yeah yeah, and did so quite impressively
for a very long time. And he found out about
the National Radio Quiet Zone and was you know, naturally
(24:01):
attracted to on to find out more about it. So
we started hanging out there and writing about it. So
a lot of the best information about what life is
actually like in there and how things are actually done
come from some of his reporting. And one of the
things that he points out is that if you are
caught using say like a cell phone within the like
(24:25):
the two miles of the Green Bank Observatory, you are
subject to a fifty dollars a day fine for as
long as you're using that phone. That's right, And as
far as Courgy can tell, absolutely no one in the
history of the Green Bank Observatory has ever been fined,
because again they're trying to do this all through cooperation
rather than they're trying to use the carrot not the stick.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
I guess exactly. So if you're listening to your DVDs,
your CDs, that's fine. You can't stream your music because
there will be an enforcer that comes along to probably
very kindly ask you. Enforcers not the right word at all,
A nudger that will come along. And that job, for
(25:09):
a very long time, was held by a man named
Wesley Sizemore, which, by the way, this all spring I
think a banger of a movie idea for me.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Oh good, I can't wait to see it.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
You'll never see it, but I'll tell you about it
one day. Okay, I'll blow the dust off the script
and hand it to you.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
You don't know, it could be it could be your
ticket to start them.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Hey, you never know, But Wesley Sizemore did this job
of enforcer. It's a guy who drives around in a
truck or a van equipped with RFI identifying gear and
look for this interference. Sometimes you say hey man, or
they don't say hey man. He goes, hey, mister mister Ronald,
because he probably knows everybody. Sure, at least in my script,
(25:50):
he does and says, you know, you gotta you know
you can't use that microwave. You gotta you gotta unplug
that thing or just give it to me, so it's
not a temptation. Sometimes he's goes, I can probably work
something out for you that works without interference. Very famously,
he is the guy. I think there was a malfunctioning
(26:12):
electric blanket that was causing some interference, and so he
went out and got one that worked. And you know,
it's funded by the NRAO. Obviously he's not doing it
out of his pocket, but apparently a lot of people
in town sort of see him or saw him while
he was doing the job. Is like a free repairman
in town.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Yeah, like, yeah, he'd just sit around and wait for
Chuck Today to come find you and repair.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
He's the new guy.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Oh sorry, yeah, that was Wesley Sizemore. Chuck Today is
the new guy. You're right, He's been going since twenty eleven.
As far as I can tell, he's still the guy
who does this. I believe he has a background in
electrical engineering and one of the things that like green
Bank does, including Chuck today and working with people who
(26:58):
like want to put up some sort of radio ten
they'll actually help you design it so that it works
really well, but it doesn't interfere with the telescope.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Like.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
That's the level of coordination and cooperation they're doing ideally.
And Chuck Naday is one of those guys. He goes
around and finds, you know, who's using Wi Fi routers,
but also kind of his hands on as well, helping
come up with solutions.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Basically, yeah, I don't know if you have your phone,
but I just texted you a picture of Chuck Nadae
or Nadai. He looks exactly like you would think. He
looks like like like the dude super friendly that drives
around in this truck full of electric gear looking too
friendly solve problems in a friendly way like Steven. Basically, no, no, no,
(27:44):
not at all. Did I ever tell you about being behind
Steven Sagall's house in.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
La No, this one's new.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
I think I talked about being in meat Loaf's house
at one point or another. Yeah, it's a cherry on.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
Top called again the land yap on top.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
The land yap. On top of that story that I
don't think I ever revealed, or I may have, and
it was years ago, was that Steven Sagall lived behind him.
And I knew this because when I was jumping on
the trampoline and Meatloaf's backyard, every time I went up,
I saw these little like Asian pagoda tops that looked
like little tops of little taj mahaws. And I was like,
(28:23):
what is that? And they were like, that's Sagal's place.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Are you sure that he didn't mean George Sigaal.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Oh, well, this is George Siegeal, but sure that would
have been a twist.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Yeah. So did you see Steven Sagal there?
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Oh no, no, no, no, I remember. No matter how
high I jumped, I could not get a picture.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
I remember I read there was a GQ profile, I believe,
years and years and years ago about him, and the
title of it was the biggest liar in Hollywood.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Oh jeez. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
It was not a good guy. It was a viscerating Yeah.
I would I would recommend going and reading it.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
Yeah, I'll check it out.
Speaker 5 (29:01):
Yeah, just added to her, should we take a break.
I feel like, yes, okay, all right, we're going to
take a break and we're going to talk about what
they're doing out there.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
Right after this, you came along and it was like, yeah,
(29:39):
well we were work pals.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
Okay, Chuck. So we were talking about how cell phone
towers and transmitters like that, like GPS transmitters, that kind
of thing, like commercial grade stuff are really the biggest
problem for the telescopes. The reason why, I don't think
we said the reason why. It's not just interfering.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Right.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
I saw a side by side picture of a radio telescope.
I think of a pulsear U and one of the
same thing, but with a lot of interference, and it's
just like, yeah, it'd be impossible to pick some of
this stuff out. Interference is one problem. Another problem is
is that, remember how sensitive those telescopes are, Their amplifiers
(30:23):
get blown out really easily. There was a in that
article they're talking about Chuck to day helping fashion an
antenna for a smoke alarm, and they were like, if
this smoke alarm went off and it sent this message
out through the antenna, if we didn't make it right,
it would blow the Green Bank telescope, Like it would
(30:44):
blow the amplifier out like, that's all it would take.
So that's really there's a couple of problems with it, right,
But there's also another problem that very few people can
do anything about, and that is from all of the
satellites that are in orbit these days.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
Yeah, for sure, especially the low earth orbit satellites. Not
only are youre going to get visible light pollution, which
is its own problem with all the telescopes, but radio
interference is a big problem. So what they're doing there, again,
these seem like the greatest bunch of people because they
don't come at it again with the stick. They're like, hey,
let's work together to make sure you can do what
(31:22):
you need to do and we can still do what
we need to do. So they're working on developing what's
called a National Radio Dynamic Zone, which is a collaborative
initiative basically between the two well not two groups, between
one group and a lot of other groups that have
these satellites to try and just talk with each other
better and make sure that they can all, like I said,
(31:42):
get their jobs done. They don't have a permanent home yet,
but they're working on it.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Yeah, they're trying to build a research center where satellite
operators can test new technologies that will let satellites work
but minimize radio interference. Hopefully they get that up because
there's a huge problem with radio and light pollution from satellites,
and we're just adding more and more and more every year.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
Yeah, for sure. All right. So if you were thinking, guys,
when are you going to talk about aliens, now's the
time because we've talked about kind of the things they're
doing there, and this is one of the things they're
doing there. One of the very first projects they started
out on years ago was what would be the origins
of SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. In nineteen fifty nine,
(32:33):
the NRAO researcher named Frank Drake launched a study called
prozac Ozma, so named for one of L. Frankbaum's characters
in his oz books. He started looking for life out there,
and while it didn't work initially, that really launched what
SETI would become.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
Yeah, Frank Drake, we've talked about him plenty of times.
He came up with the Drake equation, which is a
really interesting formula for trying to figure out how how
many intelligent civilizations might be in the universe. He's the
guy who came up with that, and green Bank is
the place where he came up with it because he
was working there. And he also hosted a pretty pretty
(33:14):
rock and party, a rock and party that featured Carl Sagan,
a guy named Melvin Calvin who's a biochemist John Lilly,
who he talked about the whacked out dolphin researcher used
to give acid to dolphins. Yeah, and they so Frank
Drake came up with the Drake equation as basically the
agenda for this conference, and then they kind of hashed
(33:35):
it out and they very famously calculated that there's at
least ten thousand advanced intelligent alien civilizations just in the
Milky Way galaxy. If you don't know about the Drake equation,
go look it up. It'll open up a whole world
of interesting stuff with you. But the upshot is is,
like you said, this still continues today because this research
(33:57):
at green Bank, essentially thanks to Frank and others, gave
birth to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligencer SETI, and SETI
is still performed at the Green Bank Telescope to this day.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
Has the Rapper Drake ever put out a song or
album called The Drake Equation.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
No, but I'm glad you I don't know.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
He may have, he should have. If he hasn't, it
seems like a no brainer.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
I'm glad you brought that up, though, because i'd heard
of the Quiet Zone before, I didn't know much about it.
But the thing that prompted this episode is one of
our listeners, a guy named Andrew Phelps. He's a photographer
and with another photographer named Paul Kransler, they went to
the quiet Zone around Green Bank and took like they
basically made a photo documentary of life in the area.
(34:46):
Oh cool, And they named their book Drake Equation and
they sent us a copy. So hats off for those
guys for the book, for making the book and sending
it to us.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
I thought you were talking about someone else at first,
because I wish I could remember his name. I follow
him on Instagram. Now there's a listener that is an
astro or astral photographer, where basically he's I don't know
where he goes to get these pictures. It's obviously in
another quiet zones of the world, or at least dark
places you know, and gets and it's not just like
(35:19):
he sets up a nice camera and does a long
exposure like it's really sophisticated equipment and process that he
goes through to get stuff that looks like it doesn't
look real. It's like, you know, celestial bodies that like
it looks like some AI generated art. It's incredible stuff.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
I think if it was an astral photographer, he'd be
taking pictures of like auras.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
Or Yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
Tell him to make sure you figure out that guy's name.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
I will, and I'll follow up on an episode. I'll
see if I can find it. It's really really impressive,
super cool and very just a super cool, hyper specific
art form. I think.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
You know.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
Yeah, or people, if you can't wait, they can go
to you chuck the podcast or on Instagram and look
at who you follow and figure it out.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
Yeah, sure, thank you. I followed Josh M Clark do
you of course I do.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
I follow you too?
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Thanks?
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Are you just now realizing that, yeah, well you don't
post much?
Speaker 2 (36:22):
No, I really don't. I got treat you. I want
to say I shit more, but I shouldn't. It just fine.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
I think you're doing just great.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Well, you do great too.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
Hey. You know who also does great? Jerry?
Speaker 2 (36:35):
She does do great, doesn't she? All right?
Speaker 1 (36:39):
We're okay. We were talking about things that go on there,
SETI Another thing that might not surprise you is military
intelligence goes on there. Many years ago, they started something
called the Sugar Grove Research Station that at the time
called the sugar Grove US Naval Radio Station. This is
a nineteen fifty nine when the Navy started building what
(37:01):
was going to be the world's largest radio antenna. It
was called the Big Ear where they were going to
listen in and intercept, you know, Russian intel. They never
finished the Big Ear because they were worried it was
not structurally sound. So rather than moving on to the
Medium Ear, I guess they didn't think it sounded cool enough,
they just scrapped it all together. But they still have
(37:22):
a station at Sugar Grove, and the NSA is also there,
so I'm sure it's all on the up and up
as so far as who and what they're listening to.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
Well, actually I saw, actually, Chuck, I saw that the
NSA abandoned Sugar Grove.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Oh, they're not there in like the last year, okay.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
And it's for sale. You can buy the whole dang town,
the which has like a number of houses it has
like a recycling planet has everything also much just I
think the the highest bid recently was like eleven point
six million dollars, and I guess it was a joke
because they couldn't come through with it. So I think
(38:03):
if you come up with eleven million dollars, they'd be
happy to take it, and you could probably get it
for less.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
Wow. I mean, considering what Kim Basinger paid for Brazlton,
Georgia in the eighties or nineties, how.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
Much was it? Do you remember?
Speaker 1 (38:17):
It was a lot? Was it? I think so? But
I mean that was she bought a town.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
I remember. Does she still own it?
Speaker 1 (38:26):
No, she got out of the Braselton business.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
She had the market corner for a minute, though.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
I usually don't look these things up. Guess what the
aioverview talks about the average home sale price?
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Oh wow, how surprising.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
Yeah, and home is misspelled. I'll find it at some point.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
You can continue, Okay, So there's also been a bunch
of great scientific discoveries there, as you can imagine.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Twenty million dollars in nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
Do you know how much she sold the town for?
Speaker 1 (38:58):
No? No, I'm not gonna look that up either. Some
things have to be left at the imagination.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
I think that's great, Chuck. Plus the AI overview just
shrugged a shrug. Emogium.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
All right, I interrupted. You were talking about scientific discoveries.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Yeah, and we're talking radio astronomy. So there's stuff like
interstellar molecules. Some of the first ones were discovered. I
think half of the interstellar molecules we know about were
discovered in the sixties at Green Bank, like pictures of pulsars,
and we understand the universe a lot more thanks to it.
But they're also really arcane, I guess, discoveries that seemed
(39:37):
like they were just like total, like they would only
interest like two people. For example, the z it was
the first detection of Zeman splitting. Zeman splitting is where
spectral lines, you know, those black bands like on the
on the spectrum, just kind of pop up the spectral
lines they split in the presence of a magnetic field.
(40:00):
That was discovered at Green Bank Observatory. And you might say, like, great,
who cares, But this is just one of those things
that shows you how science builds on science. This actually
confirmed quantum theory for the first time because it showed
that electrons respond to magnetic fields, and it proved a
lot of like the math that had been proposed for
(40:22):
quantum theory but hadn't been confirmed yet. That discovery at
Green Bank Observatory confirmed it. That's just one of a
number of incomprehensible discoveries that were made there. So it
is important. This isn't just a group of astronomers who
want their cake. They're just fat little bully boys or
anything like that. They are actual, like important. There was
(40:45):
important work being carried out because this is such a
unique place.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
Oh man, the mental picture was astoundings that just came
over me, all right. So we mentioned earlier on people
that moved there that suffer from what's called electro magnetic hypersensitivity.
This may be where you have read about it or
seen news reports because there's a woman named Diane Shall
I guess s h o W who has been there
(41:12):
for a long time, and she's she's basically the most
kind of the foremost sufferer of EHS. She moved to
the NRCUSE a while ago, got fourteen acres near Green Bank,
founded the Wave Analysis Verification Research not a ciner just so,
(41:36):
I guess so. But it's a nonprofit and basically she
she went there to live more healthily for her own
needs and to also do research on the disease and
also help bring people in and educate and care for
people with the disease. And the idea is that people
are super sensitive obviously to electromagnetic ways and they feel
(42:01):
like it gets them sick, headaches, nausea, dizziness, chest pain,
hair loss, and I say feels like because it's never
been proven that this is a real thing.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
Right now, one of the things that really undermines the
concept of electromagnetic hypersensitivity is an actual medical condition is
that people who suffer from it can't reliably tell when
they're in the presence of electromagnetic frequencies. Right They've been
given tests and tests and tests where they are being
(42:32):
bombarded with an electromagnetic pulse, and next they say that
they are and they're they're not actually being bombarded with it,
and they can't say, like, yes, now I'm being exposed
to electromagnetic radiation, now I'm not. So that alone makes
it seem like it's simply a psychological disorder y or
(42:53):
no cebo effect that people are being like their symptoms
are real, like they're losing their hair. They're not pulling
it out in secret and saying I lost my hair
because of this. Their symptoms are real. What's causing it
seems to just be in their mind. I say that though,
with the kernel of salt, grain of salt, because there
(43:17):
have been diseases before that were treated like this initially
and it turned out like, no, these people were just
a group of mistreated sufferers who actually were suffering from
something that's now recognized. So it's possible that's the case.
And even if that's not the case, these people actually
are suffering, So the World Health Organization recognizes it as
(43:39):
a medical condition, but a medical condition that warrants further
study figure out what the heck's going on and how
to actually help people who suffer from this, regardless of
what the cause is.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Yeah, for sure, And if either way, in either case,
it's really great that Diane Shaw and whoever has met
her and followed her there have a place to go
where it is quiet for them, you know.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
Yeah, And if you're like this kind of sounds familiar.
Lenny from Laverne and Shirley on Better Call Saul. He
suffered from electromagnetic hypersensitivity.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
I did not see that show. It's still on the
long list. But I thought you were going to say
Julian Moore and the Todd Haynes film Safe, But that
was a little different. I think that was and I
don't know the name for it, but the people that
think it's like everything's dirty and everything is going to
get them sick. Hypochondria, No, but more of I mean,
(44:43):
I'm sure it's maybe a subset of hypochondria, but it's
like everything is dirty, everything I touch will get me sick.
Everything there's everything's tainted and dangerous and germy.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
I mean, that's just normal for me, right, No, to.
Speaker 1 (44:59):
The point where they can't function in the world.
Speaker 2 (45:01):
Yeah, I don't mean to make light of it.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
No, I know. I know what you mean though, but
you're the whole journeys.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
The whole thing reminds me of our episode from twenty
fourteen about Morgelon's disease.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
Remember that, Oh yeah, what was that again.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
It's where people, I think, think they're suffering from something
that comes out of their skin, and when they bring
samples of what they think is like this evidence that
they're sick, it turns out to be like lint or
thread from a code or just the smallest, weirdest stuff. Yeah,
and they're like, this doesn't exist, guys, And I don't
know where it left off, but it was really.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
Interesting, that's right, and a nice way to remind people
that Morglon's disease is and from the old vault, and
there are lots and lots of episodes in the vault
that you probably don't even know about unless you've been
listening for SIS seventeen years.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
Sure, coming up on eighteen, that's right in April. So
what's going on with the National Radio Quiet Zone, Chuck?
Speaker 1 (45:59):
It's still that's still putting along, you know. They're still
trying to work it out with the satellites in orbit
near them. They're still trying to work it out with
the residents, and they're keeping on keeping on.
Speaker 2 (46:12):
There were two things that happened recently, well one not
too recently, but one very recently. The National Science Foundation
turned the Green Bank Observatory out, said we're done with you. Oh,
and it looked like the end of it. I think
back in like twenty twelve, it looked like the end
of the observatory. And instead everybody who worked there banded
together and looks for private funding, and now it's privately funded.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
Oh that's cool.
Speaker 2 (46:36):
The other thing that happened is that they seem to
have figured out how to address the Wi Fi issue
for everybody, and that was starlink, the basically global Internet.
They figured out that if you use fixed starlink where
like you're just using it in your house, you're not
(46:57):
moving around using it, it does disrupt the function of
the radio telescope. The problem is if you use like
the moving around the mobile version to where like it's
you're getting signals, say like on your phone while you're driving,
that messes with the telescope. So for ninety five point
five percent of the population around Green Bank, their their
(47:21):
problem is solved because they can use the fixed starlink.
For that other point five percent, though, it's a big
problem because emergency medical services wanted to use starlink to
communicate with each other to respond to emergencies, and now
they're like, we can't use radios, we can't use starlink,
what are we gonna do? And that's kind of where
it stands right now. There's a there at an impasse
(47:42):
trying to figure out how to let ems do its thing.
Speaker 1 (47:46):
Uh yeah, and again as of just August of last
years when they were allowed the Wi Fi. But I
don't think we said the speed at a robust two
point four.
Speaker 2 (47:54):
What is it?
Speaker 1 (47:55):
I don't even know what it is that that slow
mega something gigaherts, gigaherts.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
And I think the reason why they allowed that is
I read that because there's so many Wi Fi routers
operating on two point four now that that band of
the radio universe is just it's just trash. Now. You
can't do astronomy on it anyway, So I think.
Speaker 1 (48:16):
They were extrata on it.
Speaker 2 (48:17):
No, you can't, don't even try. Yeah, you got anything else?
Speaker 1 (48:22):
I got nothing else?
Speaker 2 (48:23):
Okay, I think then everybody that means it's time for
listener mail.
Speaker 1 (48:30):
This sort of ties in a little bit. It's about
the AM radio episode because we mentioned it was an
important alert system still and this happened to Hannah from
Texas in twenty sixteen. When Hannah lived in Denham Springs, Louisiana,
it was hit by a terrible flood that knocked out
cell phone communications. So it was like Green Bank for
a short time. Guys. We still had enough Internet to
receive information, but couldn't send anything, so we had gotten
(48:53):
word that we could tune into a specific AM radio
station each evening between a certain time to hear families
who were calling and asking if our loved ones were okay.
My partner at the time and I would go out
to my car, turn on the radio and listen, and
every evening we got updates on who was looking for who,
who was on the way to help us or not,
and who had been marked as safe. Sure enough, a
couple of days in we heard my mom calling in
(49:14):
to try and confirm that her baby girl me was okay.
Speaker 2 (49:18):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (49:18):
We also got word that my dad, who was part
of the Cajun Navy at the time, haven't even looked
that up yet, but that's I absolutely need to find
out what that is.
Speaker 2 (49:27):
I guarantee it's interesting.
Speaker 1 (49:30):
Nice we would be that they would be headed our
way if they didn't get word. With the next couple
of days, we were able to through a long chain
of communication though, to let my family know we were okay,
and we heard our own names marked as alive and well,
which was surreal on the AM radio, and a few
days later we were able to coordinate our evacuation using
that same am radio station. Wow, I know it's pretty great.
(49:54):
I've been listening to you guys for years, and you
never cease to delight me with your jokes, references, and
general information. I recommend you to everyone I meet. Much appreciated. Hannah,
and I frequently cite your episodes when sharing fun facts
with coworkers and friends. Hannah from Texas.
Speaker 2 (50:07):
Man, Hannah, thank you. I'm glad you guys are okay
over there, and that was an amazing email. That was
one of the tops. Hannah. Agree, can get a sash
that says as much. If you want to be like
Anna and send us a top email, we would love
to get that. You can send it off to us
at stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 5 (50:31):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too, and really quiet You're on
stuff you should know because we're doing an episode on
the National Radio Quiet Zone. We're not a radio show,
we're a podcast, but we feel in solidarity that we
should be quiet.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
To that's right. And we're not talking about Palm Springs
with their oppressive band on outdoor music.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Oh, I hadn't heard about that.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Yeah, you can't play music outside like by your pool.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Huh at all?
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Supposedly at all?
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Well, I guess it probably just depends on your neighbor.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
I think they're pretty strict about it. I mean, I've
never been to Palm Springs and stayed there. We should
ask our friend who lives there. Yeah, because maybe full
time residents have a little more leeway. But you know,
they do it because people. They don't want people just
going and renting houses and just blowing out the neighborhood
every weekend.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
No, this is in Fire Island, guys. No, that we're
not talking about Palm Springs, though, I guess is the
upshot of that, right.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
No, we're talking about the opposite of Palm Springs, which
is Appalachia.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
West Virginia. Yeah, is kind of the opposite of Palm Springs,
if there is such a thing. I think even if
you folded the United States map in half, they would
be pretty close to one another. They would smear one another.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
Someone's going to do that. Yeah, they're going to fold
a map up and send us a correction.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Yeah, they'll be like Josh's way off.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Well, you know where they might fold a map up
is in the National Radio Quiet Zone because they still
use those things.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
It's a great place to fold a map because yeah,
like you said, that's what you need to get around
in a lot of cases. Let's just cut to the
chase here, Chuck. The National Radio Quiet Zone does not
mean you can't play your music like that. They're saying
that this is an area where radio emissions of any
are heavily regulated, frowned upon, you might even say. And
(02:04):
the whole reason they're doing this is to protect the
delicate telescopes radio telescopes, Houston radioed astronomy at a specific
place called Green Bank, West Virginia. They've established a whole
zone around it that's meant to block out or keep
out radio transmissions so that the astronomers can go about
(02:26):
their business happily.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
That's right. And to be clear, when you say radio transmissions,
you're not talking about Casey Casem's American Top forty, right,
because we don't have a time machine and we're not
going to exhuom Casey Casem.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
They still play those likes on some radio stations on
Saturday or Sunday. It's a great way to pass some
time if you're driving.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
I've stumbled upon those and it is a nice time
capsule for sure. But you're talking about radio waves, and
we're gonna explain kind of about what radio astronomy is
and all that. In fact, we can go ahead and
do that right now, because in nineteen thirty two there
was an engineer at Bell Lab's named Karl Janski who
noticed some static interfering with some communications going across the pond,
(03:10):
as they say, got together with an astronomer over coffee
and they said, you know what, I don't think this
is interference coming from here on Earth. I think it's
coming from out in the Milky Way galaxy. And this
was a big deal in nineteen thirty two, They were like,
there are literal celestial bodies emitting radioaves out there, and
we need to start studying these and measuring these, and
(03:33):
we're going to call it radio astronomy.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Yeah, all of a sudden, we didn't just have visible
telescopes anymore. We had radio telescopes, which are very similar.
I mean, they both are just measuring different parts of
the electromagnetic spectrum. That's basically it. But the really amazing
thing about what some of these radio telescopes can do,
just to give you an idea of how sensitive they are,
(03:58):
they measure the incoming radio waves that are so weak.
They measure them in micro jant skis, which is a point.
What a micro jant Ski point?
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Is it named after Carl?
Speaker 2 (04:14):
It is named I hope so because that would be
one heck of a coincidence. Yeah, it's point. It's zero
point thirty two zeros. Wow, this is the watts, by
the way, So the electrical energy is so weak, it'so
point thirty two zeros of a single watt, right, and
I've seen it compared to a snowflake hitting the ground
(04:38):
carries a lot more energy than that. So that's how
faint some of these radio signals are, and that's how
sensitive these enormous radio telescopes are, which is why the
idea of having a quiet zone around a telescope is
so vital. Because there's so much noise in modern life.
It's just gotten worse and worse and wors. You can
(05:00):
find radio interference and everything from bulldozers to power lines,
Wi Fi routers, Christmas lights, spark plugs, and cars produce
a lot of radio interference. It's everywhere, which means then
that if you want to create a quiet zone, you
have to somehow regulate all this stuff to kind of
keep it away from the radio telescopes, which has proven
(05:23):
difficult over the years for the National Radio Quiet Zone.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
You mentioned the less than a Why do they have names?
I know there's like megawatts and killowatts and all that stuff, gigawatts.
Do they have names for things less than a w
or is micro janski?
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Is a janski is like point twenty six zeros of
one single watt?
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Well, I just meant a sort of a regular interval
like a something watt like a reggie watch.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Oh, I'm sure there's like a milliwat. I know there is.
I've heard that word before. I know I was at
a mixer of some sort and someone used that word.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Okay, I got you. You miss my joke.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Oh well I need to hear it. I gotten.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
No, I'm going I'm gonna let you hear it in
QA when you listen to it.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
So great, I have a future humiliation ahead of No.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
No, no no. It was very quick and it was
a pretty lame set up by me because it was
all just for that dumb joke. So you have it,
when hester I to look forward to.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
I can't wait to hear it.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
Something that you've said though a few times that we
want to again just sort of hammer home. You've said,
like a lot of noise and you might hear like
silence and things like that. Again, it has nothing to
do with sound. We're just talking about radio waves, which
are you know, they cast a kind of light like
a radio light, but it's not something that the human
eye can see. So again, not actual sound is what
(06:44):
we're talking about.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
No, nor actual visible light radio light. Right, So like
what I was saying, it's like radio light pollution is
absolutely everywhere, and yet they're trying to keep it as
quiet as possible. In the national radio Quiet it used
to be a lot easier when they started this whole thing,
you said, Karl Jansky made that massive monumental discovery in
(07:08):
nineteen thirty two. By nineteen fifty four, the National Science
Foundation started exploring, like how to just take radio astronomy
to the next level, which is I guess you would
say the second level because it was still so new.
They created the Advisory Panel on Radio Astronomy, and part
of what they were discussing was how to create a
(07:31):
quiet zone and where you would make one of those things.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Yeah, I mean, I can't imagine if they had were
tasked with this today, it'd probably be nearly impossible. They'd
have to use imminent domain just to kick people out.
But nineteen fifty four, like you said, it was a
little bit easier. So for a couple of years they
got together over coffee about where they could put this thing.
It needed minimal radio noise, obviously, like we talked about,
(07:55):
probably a pretty limited population. By the way, thanks for
Anna for this when she did a great job on this.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Yeah, she really did.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Surrounded by mountains because mountains provide a natural barria for
those radio signals, and probably not near a city, but
not too far from Washington, d C. Where things would
likely be headquartered. So they finally looked around. They settled
on the Appalachian Mountains between Virginia and West Virginia. That
(08:24):
is part one of solving the problem. Part two was
getting funding. Luckily, President Eisenhower was kind of into this,
so in nineteen fifty six he asked Congress back when
that was a thing, for seven million dollars to fund
a radio astronomy center, and Congress said, yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Yeah, everybody was really jazzed about this new radio astronomy stuff. Right.
West Virginia was very flattered, and they the state legislature
passed the West Virginia Radio Astronomy Zone. So the first
thing that was created was the National Radio Quiet Zone
and that was actually created before the National Radio Quiet Zone.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Yeah, they kind of laid the groundwork, I feel like.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Yeah, they laid a ten mile diameter groundwork around wherever
this telescope was going to be built. They said, wherever
you put it, there's going to be ten miles around
it where you can't use radio stuff, right, Yeah. And
then the FCC said we're going to do one better.
We're going to put another blanket layer much larger layer
(09:27):
called the National Radio Quiet Zone on top of the
West Virginia Radio Astronomy Zone to kind of make this
huge buffer, right, to make it even harder for radio
signals to mess with the radio telescopes in the West
Virginia Radio Astronomy Zone.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
That's right. So that smaller n RQZ, the National Radio
Quiet Zone had from the jump, had some looser restrictions
than the even much smaller WVRAZ. It covered a much
larger area, about thirteen thousand square miles. But think of
(10:04):
it this way. It's really a rectangle, the NRQZ thirteen
thousand square miles across the Virginia and West Virginia and
a little bit of Maryland, the southernmost tip on that
western panhandle, just a tip. It's very mountainous. It's got
parts of the Allegheny, parts of the Blue Ridge Mountains,
but mainly the Appalachian Mountains. And within that thirteen thousand
(10:27):
square mile rectangle, you've got that West Virginia the wv RIZ.
In the center of that, you've got a two mile
zone that surrounds Green Bank, West Virginia. And every time
you go into a smaller circle within that rectangle. It
gets more and more restrictive as for what kind of
(10:48):
radio noise that you can have, because in the middle
of that zone you've got the Green Bank Observatory and
they have even more restrictions right there in the center.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Yeah, at the Green Bank observd to you can't even
think about using any kind of radio creating device because
that would create radio waves.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
If you think about Wi Fi there that you're fired.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Yeah, you fired. If you're lucky, they'll really work you
over there. They've got a gang of goons that enforced
this with the iron fist. So we talked about how
all of this. The quiet zone itself was established. Simultaneously,
they're working on creating the actual observatory that's going to
be in the middle of this quiet zone, and initially
(11:31):
it was called the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in that
town of Green Bank, which is in the center of
the West Virginia Radio Astronomy Zone that was established in
nineteen fifty six, and they started building telescopes, one bigger
than the other. They started with the toattele eighty five
foot back and then the three hundred foot telescope. They
(11:51):
go one hundred and forty foot telescope, which are very
boring names, but originally, as you might imagine, everybody is
sociated with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory lived in this
ultra quiet zone around the observatory, and they ran into
some early problems where the employees are like, we can't
(12:12):
live here.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Sorry right, yeah, I mean they said, you know, the
medical care and access to great healthcare is an awesome
the schools here aren't great for my kids, and so
they relocated the admin headquarters to the University of Virginia
and Charlottesville. The researchers remained there on site in eighty eight,
(12:33):
and I think that was in nineteen sixty five when
they built most of this stuff, those big tall towers.
In eighty eight, the three hundred foot telescope collapsed. The
one hundred and forty foot said ha ha, But then
it was replaced by the Robert C. Bird Green Bank
Telescope in two thousand and one, which still stands today
and not only stands, but it's like it is the
(12:55):
largest fully steerable radio telescope in the world with get this,
a two point three acre dish and almost five hundred
feet four hundred and eighty five feet, which is twenty
one and sixteen big macs.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Is it?
Speaker 1 (13:09):
That's all for you, my friend?
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Thank you buddy. Wow, that was a delightful little line yap.
What alan yap? We've talked about this before. Oh remind
me a lane yap is just like a little something extra, Okay,
and I find it incredibly obnoxious to use.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Well, I think it's great and it sure beats the
heck out of a cherry on top.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Alright, let's come out with something else.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
The lineyap on top.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Okay, there you go. There's one other thing that the
Green Bank telescope, the one that's currently in use, can
boast you ready for this? Yes, it has the world's
largest ball bearing. Oh wow, the ball bearing inside of
this thing that this massive telescope steers on.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
I can't wait.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Seventeen and a half feet in diameter, wow, which means
it's as big a as a male adult giraffe is tall.
That's the best I could come up. I know it's awful,
it's clumsy, but I could not come up with anything else.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Hey, Alexa, what's seventeen feet tall?
Speaker 2 (14:17):
I asked Duck Dunco instead.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Okay, and I'm sorry for everyone who's Alexi? Just triggered Alexa?
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Alexa, Alexa play one direction?
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Oh boy, that's good.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
You want to take a break while everybody's trying to
turn off one direction?
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Yeah, let's take a break. We'll be right back.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
You came along and it was like, yeah, well we.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Were work pals, all right. So within that thirteen thousand
square mile rectangle, the National Radio Quite Zone, you cannot
and this is where the restrictions begin, and we're gonna
get more granular. You can't have any fixed or permanent
transmitters installed unless you get approval from the NRQZ and
(15:28):
the FCC.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
What's the NTIA, the National Telecommunications and Information Agency, Very obscure,
but they supposedly are replacing FEMA as the new World
orders jack boot troops.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Okay, good to know. So you can't build any big,
permanent things there. So that means just within that big
thirteen thousand square mile rectangle, just somebody living there doesn't
have to worry too much. That means that no company
can come in and build something really.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Big, right, That's really what we're looking at here. If
you're in the actual thirteen thousand square mile thing, you
don't have to really worry about a cell phone. The
thing is that also means since there's no cell phone
towers that are allowed there, your cell phone's going to
be useless in a lot of places. I think that's
(16:23):
fair enough to expect anyway, because Pocahontas County, which is
where a lot of the main part, which is definitely
where Green Bank is, I think three quarters of it
is national and state protected wilderness. So you're not going
to expect to get a cell phone signal there anyway.
And if you're passing through this area, you're probably going
to the quiet zone on purpose, so you can expect this.
(16:47):
It's really just an issue if you actually live or
work in this area, or you're a company trying to
set up new infrastructure. That's really who's being affected by this.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Yeah, for sure if you read and I had heard
of this before at some point, like I saw some
news reporter read an article that portray it as like,
you know, it's like going back in time basically, And
we'll get to the ways that it is sort of
like that, but it's not entirely like that. They've never
entirely banned any kind of radio transmission. It's just really
(17:18):
regulated like they have certain radio broadcasts because they have
to have those emergency transmissions that we talked about in
Communications in the Am Radio episode. Those have always been there.
You can have TV. It is restricted, but they permit
like cable TV and even satellite TV, which kind of
surprises me. Yeah, and Wi Fi was not available for
(17:40):
a long long time until I think just last year.
But they could have wired internet with the Ethernet cable right.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
If it was wired, no problem, But the Wi Fi
was going to produce a lot of problems because you're
I mean, that's a your routers, a radio transmitter. So yeah,
Apparently a lot of people, as we'll see, are like,
well whatever, I'm still going to have Wi Fi, including
Green Bank Observatory employees who live there. But it's still
(18:09):
it's a big problem because if you live in that region,
it still affects you in all sorts of ways. Like
an It gives the example of if your car breaks down,
you don't just call somebody on the cell phone be
like I need a toe, Sure you're walking unless somebody
friendly drives by who you know and trust. They probably
(18:30):
had dinner at their house and will give you a
ride to somewhere. People use payphones. As we'll see, you
can definitely feel disconnected just from not having cell service,
let alone from Wi Fi. But that said, I think
we'll talk a little more about it later. But the
people who work for Green Bank Observatory try to work
(18:51):
with the community because although technically it's law that they
can regulate this and punish people who violate these rules, don't.
They are trying to keep a happy relationship with the
community and figure out compromises that work for everybody. That's
kind of that's what they try to do. I think
if you talk to some of the people who live
around there or elected officials around there, they might not
(19:16):
necessarily agree with you, But that seems to be at
least the mission of the Green Bank Observatory.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Yeah, and again that's specifically the Green Bank, which is
the most restrictive area where you're not gonna have any
cell service and like I said, until very recently, no
Wi Fi at all. There like no Bluetooth devices, no
RC cars and trucks for the kids and playful adults,
no microwaves. But like you said, I think you hinted
(19:43):
at it a lot of people or some people, because
there's not a lot of people there period, but some
people move there for that reason. They want a simpler lifestyle,
they want less technology. And we'll talk a little bit
more about, you know, kind of some of the people
that attracts because it can get very interesting, other peop
people can get annoyed. Most people there probably just you know,
(20:04):
that's where they've always lived and so that's just the deal.
It's a way of life. I think in twenty sixteen
that was an Italian graduate student named Jeffrero Carlini who
traveled there to study like the people and were like,
you know, what's it like for the people that live there?
And he found and this is a very small scale study.
It wasn't like the most robust scientific thing, but I
(20:26):
think just walking around and studying and talking to people,
he found that people seem to have lower anxiety there.
But it's different. You know, they use maps, they use
payphones still, just.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
The idea of not having access to like social media,
and yeah, a lot just a lot of like modern
life or having a cell phone, like being able to
be contacted all the time. I can't help but think
that yes, you as a group would have less anxiety
on the.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Whole, especially teens. I think it was Australia. Didn't they
just pass a loss thing you couldn't be on social
media until you were a certain.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Age I think sixteen.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Hats off to you guys, because yeah, that's how it
should be. Teens there do have things like iPhones, they
can't use them for textra calls. So there was one
team that said, it's basically a clock and a calculator,
so imagine imagine calculator. Watches are very much in style.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Still, yeah, those cassio ones, Yeah, those are awesome. The
thing is is this is all I mean as of
last year I think, meaning twenty twenty five, but also
some changes really started to take place, I think in
the summer of twenty twenty four, like certain kinds of
Wi Fi is now allowed, and things are now changing.
(21:49):
I mean once you add widespread internet access, like the
world's going to change or this area is going to
change overnight. Basically the better writing imagine going right, Imagine
going from nineteen ninety seven to twenty twenty five in
this in the span of a day after installing a
(22:10):
Wi Fi router in your house.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Well, I mean that's one thing. Anna mentions sort of
at the end of her research was like there was
a while there where the Gulf was really big, like
when you know, for the longest time, it was like, well,
things aren't that much different, sure, but then once the
Internet came along and then they weren't getting things like
Wi Fi and Bluetooth, Like the golf got pretty wide
there for a while. But like we said, it attracts
(22:34):
a lot of interesting folks. There are certainly some some
conspiracy theorists that go there on purpose. The National Alliance
Headquarters for the Neo Nazis has been in Poconnas County
for a long time. Obviously you're gonna get some hippies,
some communes. There was a quasi cult perhaps called Zendic
(22:54):
Farm that was there for a little while. They kind
of moved all over I looked into them all over
the United States, but ended up there until one of
their dear leaders passed away in nineteen ninety nine. The
other errols In Dick, passed away in twenty twelve, so
that's when that kind of ended. And we'll talk about
this last group toward the end. But most famously it's
(23:16):
probably known and where you might have seen articles or
news reports people moving there that suffer from electromagnetic hypersensitivity.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Yeah. We'll talk a little bit more about that later, right. Yeah, So,
if you have heard about this, is a good chance
that you stumbled across a Wired article on it appropriately that.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Might have been where I read about it.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
There's a guy named Stephen Curzy who's an author. He's
a journalist who just kind of I was reading one
of his Wired articles and he was talking about how
he became kind of obsessed with the idea of living
without a phone. Yeah yeah, and did so quite impressively
for a very long time. And he found out about
the National Radio Quiet Zone and was you know, naturally
(24:01):
attracted to on to find out more about it. So
we started hanging out there and writing about it. So
a lot of the best information about what life is
actually like in there and how things are actually done
come from some of his reporting. And one of the
things that he points out is that if you are
caught using say like a cell phone within the like
(24:25):
the two miles of the Green Bank Observatory, you are
subject to a fifty dollars a day fine for as
long as you're using that phone. That's right, And as
far as Courgy can tell, absolutely no one in the
history of the Green Bank Observatory has ever been fined,
because again they're trying to do this all through cooperation
rather than they're trying to use the carrot not the stick.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
I guess exactly. So if you're listening to your DVDs,
your CDs, that's fine. You can't stream your music because
there will be an enforcer that comes along to probably
very kindly ask you. Enforcers not the right word at all,
A nudger that will come along. And that job, for
(25:09):
a very long time, was held by a man named
Wesley Sizemore, which, by the way, this all spring I
think a banger of a movie idea for me.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Oh good, I can't wait to see it.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
You'll never see it, but I'll tell you about it
one day. Okay, I'll blow the dust off the script
and hand it to you.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
You don't know, it could be it could be your
ticket to start them.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Hey, you never know, But Wesley Sizemore did this job
of enforcer. It's a guy who drives around in a
truck or a van equipped with RFI identifying gear and
look for this interference. Sometimes you say hey man, or
they don't say hey man. He goes, hey, mister mister Ronald,
because he probably knows everybody. Sure, at least in my script,
(25:50):
he does and says, you know, you gotta you know
you can't use that microwave. You gotta you gotta unplug
that thing or just give it to me, so it's
not a temptation. Sometimes he's goes, I can probably work
something out for you that works without interference. Very famously,
he is the guy. I think there was a malfunctioning
(26:12):
electric blanket that was causing some interference, and so he
went out and got one that worked. And you know,
it's funded by the NRAO. Obviously he's not doing it
out of his pocket, but apparently a lot of people
in town sort of see him or saw him while
he was doing the job. Is like a free repairman
in town.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Yeah, like, yeah, he'd just sit around and wait for
Chuck Today to come find you and repair.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
He's the new guy.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Oh sorry, yeah, that was Wesley Sizemore. Chuck Today is
the new guy. You're right, He's been going since twenty eleven.
As far as I can tell, he's still the guy
who does this. I believe he has a background in
electrical engineering and one of the things that like green
Bank does, including Chuck today and working with people who
(26:58):
like want to put up some sort of radio ten
they'll actually help you design it so that it works
really well, but it doesn't interfere with the telescope.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Like.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
That's the level of coordination and cooperation they're doing ideally.
And Chuck Naday is one of those guys. He goes
around and finds, you know, who's using Wi Fi routers,
but also kind of his hands on as well, helping
come up with solutions.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Basically, yeah, I don't know if you have your phone,
but I just texted you a picture of Chuck Nadae
or Nadai. He looks exactly like you would think. He
looks like like like the dude super friendly that drives
around in this truck full of electric gear looking too
friendly solve problems in a friendly way like Steven. Basically, no, no, no,
(27:44):
not at all. Did I ever tell you about being behind
Steven Sagall's house in.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
La No, this one's new.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
I think I talked about being in meat Loaf's house
at one point or another. Yeah, it's a cherry on.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
Top called again the land yap on top.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
The land yap. On top of that story that I
don't think I ever revealed, or I may have, and
it was years ago, was that Steven Sagall lived behind him.
And I knew this because when I was jumping on
the trampoline and Meatloaf's backyard, every time I went up,
I saw these little like Asian pagoda tops that looked
like little tops of little taj mahaws. And I was like,
(28:23):
what is that? And they were like, that's Sagal's place.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Are you sure that he didn't mean George Sigaal.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Oh, well, this is George Siegeal, but sure that would
have been a twist.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Yeah. So did you see Steven Sagal there?
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Oh no, no, no, no, I remember. No matter how
high I jumped, I could not get a picture.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
I remember I read there was a GQ profile, I believe,
years and years and years ago about him, and the
title of it was the biggest liar in Hollywood.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Oh jeez. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
It was not a good guy. It was a viscerating Yeah.
I would I would recommend going and reading it.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
Yeah, I'll check it out.
Speaker 5 (29:01):
Yeah, just added to her, should we take a break.
I feel like, yes, okay, all right, we're going to
take a break and we're going to talk about what
they're doing out there.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
Right after this, you came along and it was like, yeah,
(29:39):
well we were work pals.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
Okay, Chuck. So we were talking about how cell phone
towers and transmitters like that, like GPS transmitters, that kind
of thing, like commercial grade stuff are really the biggest
problem for the telescopes. The reason why, I don't think
we said the reason why. It's not just interfering.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Right.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
I saw a side by side picture of a radio telescope.
I think of a pulsear U and one of the
same thing, but with a lot of interference, and it's
just like, yeah, it'd be impossible to pick some of
this stuff out. Interference is one problem. Another problem is
is that, remember how sensitive those telescopes are, Their amplifiers
(30:23):
get blown out really easily. There was a in that
article they're talking about Chuck to day helping fashion an
antenna for a smoke alarm, and they were like, if
this smoke alarm went off and it sent this message
out through the antenna, if we didn't make it right,
it would blow the Green Bank telescope, Like it would
(30:44):
blow the amplifier out like, that's all it would take.
So that's really there's a couple of problems with it, right,
But there's also another problem that very few people can
do anything about, and that is from all of the
satellites that are in orbit these days.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
Yeah, for sure, especially the low earth orbit satellites. Not
only are youre going to get visible light pollution, which
is its own problem with all the telescopes, but radio
interference is a big problem. So what they're doing there, again,
these seem like the greatest bunch of people because they
don't come at it again with the stick. They're like, hey,
let's work together to make sure you can do what
(31:22):
you need to do and we can still do what
we need to do. So they're working on developing what's
called a National Radio Dynamic Zone, which is a collaborative
initiative basically between the two well not two groups, between
one group and a lot of other groups that have
these satellites to try and just talk with each other
better and make sure that they can all, like I said,
(31:42):
get their jobs done. They don't have a permanent home yet,
but they're working on it.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Yeah, they're trying to build a research center where satellite
operators can test new technologies that will let satellites work
but minimize radio interference. Hopefully they get that up because
there's a huge problem with radio and light pollution from satellites,
and we're just adding more and more and more every year.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
Yeah, for sure. All right. So if you were thinking, guys,
when are you going to talk about aliens, now's the
time because we've talked about kind of the things they're
doing there, and this is one of the things they're
doing there. One of the very first projects they started
out on years ago was what would be the origins
of SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. In nineteen fifty nine,
(32:33):
the NRAO researcher named Frank Drake launched a study called
prozac Ozma, so named for one of L. Frankbaum's characters
in his oz books. He started looking for life out there,
and while it didn't work initially, that really launched what
SETI would become.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
Yeah, Frank Drake, we've talked about him plenty of times.
He came up with the Drake equation, which is a
really interesting formula for trying to figure out how how
many intelligent civilizations might be in the universe. He's the
guy who came up with that, and green Bank is
the place where he came up with it because he
was working there. And he also hosted a pretty pretty
(33:14):
rock and party, a rock and party that featured Carl Sagan,
a guy named Melvin Calvin who's a biochemist John Lilly,
who he talked about the whacked out dolphin researcher used
to give acid to dolphins. Yeah, and they so Frank
Drake came up with the Drake equation as basically the
agenda for this conference, and then they kind of hashed
(33:35):
it out and they very famously calculated that there's at
least ten thousand advanced intelligent alien civilizations just in the
Milky Way galaxy. If you don't know about the Drake equation,
go look it up. It'll open up a whole world
of interesting stuff with you. But the upshot is is,
like you said, this still continues today because this research
(33:57):
at green Bank, essentially thanks to Frank and others, gave
birth to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligencer SETI, and SETI
is still performed at the Green Bank Telescope to this day.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
Has the Rapper Drake ever put out a song or
album called The Drake Equation.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
No, but I'm glad you I don't know.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
He may have, he should have. If he hasn't, it
seems like a no brainer.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
I'm glad you brought that up, though, because i'd heard
of the Quiet Zone before, I didn't know much about it.
But the thing that prompted this episode is one of
our listeners, a guy named Andrew Phelps. He's a photographer
and with another photographer named Paul Kransler, they went to
the quiet Zone around Green Bank and took like they
basically made a photo documentary of life in the area.
(34:46):
Oh cool, And they named their book Drake Equation and
they sent us a copy. So hats off for those
guys for the book, for making the book and sending
it to us.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
I thought you were talking about someone else at first,
because I wish I could remember his name. I follow
him on Instagram. Now there's a listener that is an
astro or astral photographer, where basically he's I don't know
where he goes to get these pictures. It's obviously in
another quiet zones of the world, or at least dark
places you know, and gets and it's not just like
(35:19):
he sets up a nice camera and does a long
exposure like it's really sophisticated equipment and process that he
goes through to get stuff that looks like it doesn't
look real. It's like, you know, celestial bodies that like
it looks like some AI generated art. It's incredible stuff.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
I think if it was an astral photographer, he'd be
taking pictures of like auras.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
Or Yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
Tell him to make sure you figure out that guy's name.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
I will, and I'll follow up on an episode. I'll
see if I can find it. It's really really impressive,
super cool and very just a super cool, hyper specific
art form. I think.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
You know.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
Yeah, or people, if you can't wait, they can go
to you chuck the podcast or on Instagram and look
at who you follow and figure it out.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
Yeah, sure, thank you. I followed Josh M Clark do
you of course I do.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
I follow you too?
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Thanks?
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Are you just now realizing that, yeah, well you don't
post much?
Speaker 2 (36:22):
No, I really don't. I got treat you. I want
to say I shit more, but I shouldn't. It just fine.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
I think you're doing just great.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Well, you do great too.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
Hey. You know who also does great? Jerry?
Speaker 2 (36:35):
She does do great, doesn't she? All right?
Speaker 1 (36:39):
We're okay. We were talking about things that go on there,
SETI Another thing that might not surprise you is military
intelligence goes on there. Many years ago, they started something
called the Sugar Grove Research Station that at the time
called the sugar Grove US Naval Radio Station. This is
a nineteen fifty nine when the Navy started building what
(37:01):
was going to be the world's largest radio antenna. It
was called the Big Ear where they were going to
listen in and intercept, you know, Russian intel. They never
finished the Big Ear because they were worried it was
not structurally sound. So rather than moving on to the
Medium Ear, I guess they didn't think it sounded cool enough,
they just scrapped it all together. But they still have
(37:22):
a station at Sugar Grove, and the NSA is also there,
so I'm sure it's all on the up and up
as so far as who and what they're listening to.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
Well, actually I saw, actually, Chuck, I saw that the
NSA abandoned Sugar Grove.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Oh, they're not there in like the last year, okay.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
And it's for sale. You can buy the whole dang town,
the which has like a number of houses it has
like a recycling planet has everything also much just I
think the the highest bid recently was like eleven point
six million dollars, and I guess it was a joke
because they couldn't come through with it. So I think
(38:03):
if you come up with eleven million dollars, they'd be
happy to take it, and you could probably get it
for less.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
Wow. I mean, considering what Kim Basinger paid for Brazlton,
Georgia in the eighties or nineties, how.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
Much was it? Do you remember?
Speaker 1 (38:17):
It was a lot? Was it? I think so? But
I mean that was she bought a town.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
I remember. Does she still own it?
Speaker 1 (38:26):
No, she got out of the Braselton business.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
She had the market corner for a minute, though.
Speaker 1 (38:32):
I usually don't look these things up. Guess what the
aioverview talks about the average home sale price?
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Oh wow, how surprising.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
Yeah, and home is misspelled. I'll find it at some point.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
You can continue, Okay, So there's also been a bunch
of great scientific discoveries there, as you can imagine.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Twenty million dollars in nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
Do you know how much she sold the town for?
Speaker 1 (38:58):
No? No, I'm not gonna look that up either. Some
things have to be left at the imagination.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
I think that's great, Chuck. Plus the AI overview just
shrugged a shrug. Emogium.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
All right, I interrupted. You were talking about scientific discoveries.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Yeah, and we're talking radio astronomy. So there's stuff like
interstellar molecules. Some of the first ones were discovered. I
think half of the interstellar molecules we know about were
discovered in the sixties at Green Bank, like pictures of pulsars,
and we understand the universe a lot more thanks to it.
But they're also really arcane, I guess, discoveries that seemed
(39:37):
like they were just like total, like they would only
interest like two people. For example, the z it was
the first detection of Zeman splitting. Zeman splitting is where
spectral lines, you know, those black bands like on the
on the spectrum, just kind of pop up the spectral
lines they split in the presence of a magnetic field.
(40:00):
That was discovered at Green Bank Observatory. And you might say, like, great,
who cares, But this is just one of those things
that shows you how science builds on science. This actually
confirmed quantum theory for the first time because it showed
that electrons respond to magnetic fields, and it proved a
lot of like the math that had been proposed for
(40:22):
quantum theory but hadn't been confirmed yet. That discovery at
Green Bank Observatory confirmed it. That's just one of a
number of incomprehensible discoveries that were made there. So it
is important. This isn't just a group of astronomers who
want their cake. They're just fat little bully boys or
anything like that. They are actual, like important. There was
(40:45):
important work being carried out because this is such a
unique place.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
Oh man, the mental picture was astoundings that just came
over me, all right. So we mentioned earlier on people
that moved there that suffer from what's called electro magnetic hypersensitivity.
This may be where you have read about it or
seen news reports because there's a woman named Diane Shall
I guess s h o W who has been there
(41:12):
for a long time, and she's she's basically the most
kind of the foremost sufferer of EHS. She moved to
the NRCUSE a while ago, got fourteen acres near Green Bank,
founded the Wave Analysis Verification Research not a ciner just so,
(41:36):
I guess so. But it's a nonprofit and basically she
she went there to live more healthily for her own
needs and to also do research on the disease and
also help bring people in and educate and care for
people with the disease. And the idea is that people
are super sensitive obviously to electromagnetic ways and they feel
(42:01):
like it gets them sick, headaches, nausea, dizziness, chest pain,
hair loss, and I say feels like because it's never
been proven that this is a real thing.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
Right now, one of the things that really undermines the
concept of electromagnetic hypersensitivity is an actual medical condition is
that people who suffer from it can't reliably tell when
they're in the presence of electromagnetic frequencies. Right They've been
given tests and tests and tests where they are being
(42:32):
bombarded with an electromagnetic pulse, and next they say that
they are and they're they're not actually being bombarded with it,
and they can't say, like, yes, now I'm being exposed
to electromagnetic radiation, now I'm not. So that alone makes
it seem like it's simply a psychological disorder y or
(42:53):
no cebo effect that people are being like their symptoms
are real, like they're losing their hair. They're not pulling
it out in secret and saying I lost my hair
because of this. Their symptoms are real. What's causing it
seems to just be in their mind. I say that though,
with the kernel of salt, grain of salt, because there
(43:17):
have been diseases before that were treated like this initially
and it turned out like, no, these people were just
a group of mistreated sufferers who actually were suffering from
something that's now recognized. So it's possible that's the case.
And even if that's not the case, these people actually
are suffering, So the World Health Organization recognizes it as
(43:39):
a medical condition, but a medical condition that warrants further
study figure out what the heck's going on and how
to actually help people who suffer from this, regardless of
what the cause is.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Yeah, for sure, And if either way, in either case,
it's really great that Diane Shaw and whoever has met
her and followed her there have a place to go
where it is quiet for them, you know.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
Yeah, And if you're like this kind of sounds familiar.
Lenny from Laverne and Shirley on Better Call Saul. He
suffered from electromagnetic hypersensitivity.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
I did not see that show. It's still on the
long list. But I thought you were going to say
Julian Moore and the Todd Haynes film Safe, But that
was a little different. I think that was and I
don't know the name for it, but the people that
think it's like everything's dirty and everything is going to
get them sick. Hypochondria, No, but more of I mean,
(44:43):
I'm sure it's maybe a subset of hypochondria, but it's
like everything is dirty, everything I touch will get me sick.
Everything there's everything's tainted and dangerous and germy.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
I mean, that's just normal for me, right, No, to.
Speaker 1 (44:59):
The point where they can't function in the world.
Speaker 2 (45:01):
Yeah, I don't mean to make light of it.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
No, I know. I know what you mean though, but
you're the whole journeys.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
The whole thing reminds me of our episode from twenty
fourteen about Morgelon's disease.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
Remember that, Oh yeah, what was that again.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
It's where people, I think, think they're suffering from something
that comes out of their skin, and when they bring
samples of what they think is like this evidence that
they're sick, it turns out to be like lint or
thread from a code or just the smallest, weirdest stuff. Yeah,
and they're like, this doesn't exist, guys, And I don't
know where it left off, but it was really.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
Interesting, that's right, and a nice way to remind people
that Morglon's disease is and from the old vault, and
there are lots and lots of episodes in the vault
that you probably don't even know about unless you've been
listening for SIS seventeen years.
Speaker 2 (45:49):
Sure, coming up on eighteen, that's right in April. So
what's going on with the National Radio Quiet Zone, Chuck?
Speaker 1 (45:59):
It's still that's still putting along, you know. They're still
trying to work it out with the satellites in orbit
near them. They're still trying to work it out with
the residents, and they're keeping on keeping on.
Speaker 2 (46:12):
There were two things that happened recently, well one not
too recently, but one very recently. The National Science Foundation
turned the Green Bank Observatory out, said we're done with you. Oh,
and it looked like the end of it. I think
back in like twenty twelve, it looked like the end
of the observatory. And instead everybody who worked there banded
together and looks for private funding, and now it's privately funded.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
Oh that's cool.
Speaker 2 (46:36):
The other thing that happened is that they seem to
have figured out how to address the Wi Fi issue
for everybody, and that was starlink, the basically global Internet.
They figured out that if you use fixed starlink where
like you're just using it in your house, you're not
(46:57):
moving around using it, it does disrupt the function of
the radio telescope. The problem is if you use like
the moving around the mobile version to where like it's
you're getting signals, say like on your phone while you're driving,
that messes with the telescope. So for ninety five point
five percent of the population around Green Bank, their their
(47:21):
problem is solved because they can use the fixed starlink.
For that other point five percent, though, it's a big
problem because emergency medical services wanted to use starlink to
communicate with each other to respond to emergencies, and now
they're like, we can't use radios, we can't use starlink,
what are we gonna do? And that's kind of where
it stands right now. There's a there at an impasse
(47:42):
trying to figure out how to let ems do its thing.
Speaker 1 (47:46):
Uh yeah, and again as of just August of last
years when they were allowed the Wi Fi. But I
don't think we said the speed at a robust two
point four.
Speaker 2 (47:54):
What is it?
Speaker 1 (47:55):
I don't even know what it is that that slow
mega something gigaherts, gigaherts.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
And I think the reason why they allowed that is
I read that because there's so many Wi Fi routers
operating on two point four now that that band of
the radio universe is just it's just trash. Now. You
can't do astronomy on it anyway, So I think.
Speaker 1 (48:16):
They were extrata on it.
Speaker 2 (48:17):
No, you can't, don't even try. Yeah, you got anything else?
Speaker 1 (48:22):
I got nothing else?
Speaker 2 (48:23):
Okay, I think then everybody that means it's time for
listener mail.
Speaker 1 (48:30):
This sort of ties in a little bit. It's about
the AM radio episode because we mentioned it was an
important alert system still and this happened to Hannah from
Texas in twenty sixteen. When Hannah lived in Denham Springs, Louisiana,
it was hit by a terrible flood that knocked out
cell phone communications. So it was like Green Bank for
a short time. Guys. We still had enough Internet to
receive information, but couldn't send anything, so we had gotten
(48:53):
word that we could tune into a specific AM radio
station each evening between a certain time to hear families
who were calling and asking if our loved ones were okay.
My partner at the time and I would go out
to my car, turn on the radio and listen, and
every evening we got updates on who was looking for who,
who was on the way to help us or not,
and who had been marked as safe. Sure enough, a
couple of days in we heard my mom calling in
(49:14):
to try and confirm that her baby girl me was okay.
Speaker 2 (49:18):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (49:18):
We also got word that my dad, who was part
of the Cajun Navy at the time, haven't even looked
that up yet, but that's I absolutely need to find
out what that is.
Speaker 2 (49:27):
I guarantee it's interesting.
Speaker 1 (49:30):
Nice we would be that they would be headed our
way if they didn't get word. With the next couple
of days, we were able to through a long chain
of communication though, to let my family know we were okay,
and we heard our own names marked as alive and well,
which was surreal on the AM radio, and a few
days later we were able to coordinate our evacuation using
that same am radio station. Wow, I know it's pretty great.
(49:54):
I've been listening to you guys for years, and you
never cease to delight me with your jokes, references, and
general information. I recommend you to everyone I meet. Much appreciated. Hannah,
and I frequently cite your episodes when sharing fun facts
with coworkers and friends. Hannah from Texas.
Speaker 2 (50:07):
Man, Hannah, thank you. I'm glad you guys are okay
over there, and that was an amazing email. That was
one of the tops. Hannah. Agree, can get a sash
that says as much. If you want to be like
Anna and send us a top email, we would love
to get that. You can send it off to us
at stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 5 (50:31):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
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