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Doin’ Science in the National Radio Quiet Zone · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:11
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
0:13
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and really quiet You're on
0:17
Speaker 2: stuff you should know because we're doing an episode on
0:21
Speaker 2: the National Radio Quiet Zone. We're not a radio show,
0:26
Speaker 2: we're a podcast, but we feel in solidarity that we
0:29
Speaker 2: should be quiet.
0:30
Speaker 1: To that's right. And we're not talking about Palm Springs
0:34
Speaker 1: with their oppressive band on outdoor music.
0:37
Speaker 2: Oh, I hadn't heard about that.
0:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can't play music outside like by your pool.
0:42
Speaker 2: Huh at all?
0:44
Speaker 1: Supposedly at all?
0:45
Speaker 2: Well, I guess it probably just depends on your neighbor.
0:49
Speaker 1: I think they're pretty strict about it. I mean, I've
0:51
Speaker 1: never been to Palm Springs and stayed there. We should
0:54
Speaker 1: ask our friend who lives there. Yeah, because maybe full
0:57
Speaker 1: time residents have a little more leeway. But you know,
0:59
Speaker 1: they do it because people. They don't want people just
1:01
Speaker 1: going and renting houses and just blowing out the neighborhood
1:03
Speaker 1: every weekend.
1:04
Speaker 2: No, this is in Fire Island, guys. No, that we're
1:07
Speaker 2: not talking about Palm Springs, though, I guess is the
1:10
Speaker 2: upshot of that, right.
1:11
Speaker 1: No, we're talking about the opposite of Palm Springs, which
1:13
Speaker 1: is Appalachia.
1:15
Speaker 2: West Virginia. Yeah, is kind of the opposite of Palm Springs,
1:19
Speaker 2: if there is such a thing. I think even if
1:21
Speaker 2: you folded the United States map in half, they would
1:25
Speaker 2: be pretty close to one another. They would smear one another.
1:28
Speaker 1: Someone's going to do that. Yeah, they're going to fold
1:31
Speaker 1: a map up and send us a correction.
1:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, they'll be like Josh's way off.
1:35
Speaker 1: Well, you know where they might fold a map up
1:37
Speaker 1: is in the National Radio Quiet Zone because they still
1:40
Speaker 1: use those things.
1:41
Speaker 2: It's a great place to fold a map because yeah,
1:44
Speaker 2: like you said, that's what you need to get around
1:46
Speaker 2: in a lot of cases. Let's just cut to the
1:48
Speaker 2: chase here, Chuck. The National Radio Quiet Zone does not
1:52
Speaker 2: mean you can't play your music like that. They're saying
1:55
Speaker 2: that this is an area where radio emissions of any
2:00
Speaker 2: are heavily regulated, frowned upon, you might even say. And
2:04
Speaker 2: the whole reason they're doing this is to protect the
2:08
Speaker 2: delicate telescopes radio telescopes, Houston radioed astronomy at a specific
2:14
Speaker 2: place called Green Bank, West Virginia. They've established a whole
2:18
Speaker 2: zone around it that's meant to block out or keep
2:21
Speaker 2: out radio transmissions so that the astronomers can go about
2:26
Speaker 2: their business happily.
2:27
Speaker 1: That's right. And to be clear, when you say radio transmissions,
2:31
Speaker 1: you're not talking about Casey Casem's American Top forty, right,
2:35
Speaker 1: because we don't have a time machine and we're not
2:37
Speaker 1: going to exhuom Casey Casem.
2:39
Speaker 2: They still play those likes on some radio stations on
2:43
Speaker 2: Saturday or Sunday. It's a great way to pass some
2:46
Speaker 2: time if you're driving.
2:47
Speaker 1: I've stumbled upon those and it is a nice time
2:49
Speaker 1: capsule for sure. But you're talking about radio waves, and
2:52
Speaker 1: we're gonna explain kind of about what radio astronomy is
2:55
Speaker 1: and all that. In fact, we can go ahead and
2:58
Speaker 1: do that right now, because in nineteen thirty two there
3:01
Speaker 1: was an engineer at Bell Lab's named Karl Janski who
3:06
Speaker 1: noticed some static interfering with some communications going across the pond,
3:10
Speaker 1: as they say, got together with an astronomer over coffee
3:15
Speaker 1: and they said, you know what, I don't think this
3:17
Speaker 1: is interference coming from here on Earth. I think it's
3:20
Speaker 1: coming from out in the Milky Way galaxy. And this
3:23
Speaker 1: was a big deal in nineteen thirty two, They were like,
3:25
Speaker 1: there are literal celestial bodies emitting radioaves out there, and
3:30
Speaker 1: we need to start studying these and measuring these, and
3:33
Speaker 1: we're going to call it radio astronomy.
3:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, all of a sudden, we didn't just have visible
3:38
Speaker 2: telescopes anymore. We had radio telescopes, which are very similar.
3:42
Speaker 2: I mean, they both are just measuring different parts of
3:46
Speaker 2: the electromagnetic spectrum. That's basically it. But the really amazing
3:52
Speaker 2: thing about what some of these radio telescopes can do,
3:55
Speaker 2: just to give you an idea of how sensitive they are,
3:58
Speaker 2: they measure the incoming radio waves that are so weak.
4:04
Speaker 2: They measure them in micro jant skis, which is a point.
4:09
Speaker 2: What a micro jant Ski point?
4:13
Speaker 1: Is it named after Carl?
4:14
Speaker 2: It is named I hope so because that would be
4:17
Speaker 2: one heck of a coincidence. Yeah, it's point. It's zero
4:22
Speaker 2: point thirty two zeros. Wow, this is the watts, by
4:27
Speaker 2: the way, So the electrical energy is so weak, it'so
4:30
Speaker 2: point thirty two zeros of a single watt, right, and
4:34
Speaker 2: I've seen it compared to a snowflake hitting the ground
4:38
Speaker 2: carries a lot more energy than that. So that's how
4:41
Speaker 2: faint some of these radio signals are, and that's how
4:45
Speaker 2: sensitive these enormous radio telescopes are, which is why the
4:50
Speaker 2: idea of having a quiet zone around a telescope is
4:53
Speaker 2: so vital. Because there's so much noise in modern life.
4:58
Speaker 2: It's just gotten worse and worse and wors. You can
5:00
Speaker 2: find radio interference and everything from bulldozers to power lines,
5:07
Speaker 2: Wi Fi routers, Christmas lights, spark plugs, and cars produce
5:11
Speaker 2: a lot of radio interference. It's everywhere, which means then
5:16
Speaker 2: that if you want to create a quiet zone, you
5:18
Speaker 2: have to somehow regulate all this stuff to kind of
5:20
Speaker 2: keep it away from the radio telescopes, which has proven
5:23
Speaker 2: difficult over the years for the National Radio Quiet Zone.
5:27
Speaker 1: You mentioned the less than a Why do they have names?
5:30
Speaker 1: I know there's like megawatts and killowatts and all that stuff, gigawatts.
5:35
Speaker 1: Do they have names for things less than a w
5:38
Speaker 1: or is micro janski?
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Speaker 2: Is a janski is like point twenty six zeros of
5:44
Speaker 2: one single watt?
5:46
Speaker 1: Well, I just meant a sort of a regular interval
5:48
Speaker 1: like a something watt like a reggie watch.
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Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sure there's like a milliwat. I know there is.
5:52
Speaker 2: I've heard that word before. I know I was at
5:55
Speaker 2: a mixer of some sort and someone used that word.
5:58
Speaker 1: Okay, I got you. You miss my joke.
6:01
Speaker 2: Oh well I need to hear it. I gotten.
6:03
Speaker 1: No, I'm going I'm gonna let you hear it in
6:07
Speaker 1: QA when you listen to it.
6:09
Speaker 2: So great, I have a future humiliation ahead of No.
6:11
Speaker 1: No, no no. It was very quick and it was
6:13
Speaker 1: a pretty lame set up by me because it was
6:15
Speaker 1: all just for that dumb joke. So you have it,
6:17
Speaker 1: when hester I to look forward to.
6:19
Speaker 2: I can't wait to hear it.
6:21
Speaker 1: Something that you've said though a few times that we
6:23
Speaker 1: want to again just sort of hammer home. You've said,
6:25
Speaker 1: like a lot of noise and you might hear like
6:27
Speaker 1: silence and things like that. Again, it has nothing to
6:30
Speaker 1: do with sound. We're just talking about radio waves, which
6:34
Speaker 1: are you know, they cast a kind of light like
6:37
Speaker 1: a radio light, but it's not something that the human
6:40
Speaker 1: eye can see. So again, not actual sound is what
6:44
Speaker 1: we're talking about.
6:45
Speaker 2: No, nor actual visible light radio light. Right, So like
6:49
Speaker 2: what I was saying, it's like radio light pollution is
6:53
Speaker 2: absolutely everywhere, and yet they're trying to keep it as
6:57
Speaker 2: quiet as possible. In the national radio Quiet it used
7:01
Speaker 2: to be a lot easier when they started this whole thing,
7:05
Speaker 2: you said, Karl Jansky made that massive monumental discovery in
7:08
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty two. By nineteen fifty four, the National Science
7:13
Speaker 2: Foundation started exploring, like how to just take radio astronomy
7:18
Speaker 2: to the next level, which is I guess you would
7:20
Speaker 2: say the second level because it was still so new.
7:23
Speaker 2: They created the Advisory Panel on Radio Astronomy, and part
7:28
Speaker 2: of what they were discussing was how to create a
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Speaker 2: quiet zone and where you would make one of those things.
7:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I can't imagine if they had were
7:38
Speaker 1: tasked with this today, it'd probably be nearly impossible. They'd
7:40
Speaker 1: have to use imminent domain just to kick people out.
7:44
Speaker 1: But nineteen fifty four, like you said, it was a
7:45
Speaker 1: little bit easier. So for a couple of years they
7:48
Speaker 1: got together over coffee about where they could put this thing.
7:52
Speaker 1: It needed minimal radio noise, obviously, like we talked about,
7:55
Speaker 1: probably a pretty limited population. By the way, thanks for
7:59
Speaker 1: Anna for this when she did a great job on this.
8:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, she really did.
8:03
Speaker 1: Surrounded by mountains because mountains provide a natural barria for
8:07
Speaker 1: those radio signals, and probably not near a city, but
8:12
Speaker 1: not too far from Washington, d C. Where things would
8:15
Speaker 1: likely be headquartered. So they finally looked around. They settled
8:20
Speaker 1: on the Appalachian Mountains between Virginia and West Virginia. That
8:24
Speaker 1: is part one of solving the problem. Part two was
8:26
Speaker 1: getting funding. Luckily, President Eisenhower was kind of into this,
8:31
Speaker 1: so in nineteen fifty six he asked Congress back when
8:34
Speaker 1: that was a thing, for seven million dollars to fund
8:38
Speaker 1: a radio astronomy center, and Congress said, yeah, let's do it.
8:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, everybody was really jazzed about this new radio astronomy stuff. Right.
8:47
Speaker 2: West Virginia was very flattered, and they the state legislature
8:52
Speaker 2: passed the West Virginia Radio Astronomy Zone. So the first
8:56
Speaker 2: thing that was created was the National Radio Quiet Zone
9:00
Speaker 2: and that was actually created before the National Radio Quiet Zone.
9:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, they kind of laid the groundwork, I feel like.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, they laid a ten mile diameter groundwork around wherever
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Speaker 2: this telescope was going to be built. They said, wherever
9:13
Speaker 2: you put it, there's going to be ten miles around
9:15
Speaker 2: it where you can't use radio stuff, right, Yeah. And
9:20
Speaker 2: then the FCC said we're going to do one better.
9:23
Speaker 2: We're going to put another blanket layer much larger layer
9:27
Speaker 2: called the National Radio Quiet Zone on top of the
9:31
Speaker 2: West Virginia Radio Astronomy Zone to kind of make this
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Speaker 2: huge buffer, right, to make it even harder for radio
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Speaker 2: signals to mess with the radio telescopes in the West
9:41
Speaker 2: Virginia Radio Astronomy Zone.
9:43
Speaker 1: That's right. So that smaller n RQZ, the National Radio
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Speaker 1: Quiet Zone had from the jump, had some looser restrictions
9:54
Speaker 1: than the even much smaller WVRAZ. It covered a much
10:00
Speaker 1: larger area, about thirteen thousand square miles. But think of
10:04
Speaker 1: it this way. It's really a rectangle, the NRQZ thirteen
10:09
Speaker 1: thousand square miles across the Virginia and West Virginia and
10:13
Speaker 1: a little bit of Maryland, the southernmost tip on that
10:15
Speaker 1: western panhandle, just a tip. It's very mountainous. It's got
10:21
Speaker 1: parts of the Allegheny, parts of the Blue Ridge Mountains,
10:23
Speaker 1: but mainly the Appalachian Mountains. And within that thirteen thousand
10:27
Speaker 1: square mile rectangle, you've got that West Virginia the wv RIZ.
10:35
Speaker 1: In the center of that, you've got a two mile
10:38
Speaker 1: zone that surrounds Green Bank, West Virginia. And every time
10:42
Speaker 1: you go into a smaller circle within that rectangle. It
10:45
Speaker 1: gets more and more restrictive as for what kind of
10:48
Speaker 1: radio noise that you can have, because in the middle
10:51
Speaker 1: of that zone you've got the Green Bank Observatory and
10:54
Speaker 1: they have even more restrictions right there in the center.
10:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, at the Green Bank observd to you can't even
11:01
Speaker 2: think about using any kind of radio creating device because
11:04
Speaker 2: that would create radio waves.
11:06
Speaker 1: If you think about Wi Fi there that you're fired.
11:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, you fired. If you're lucky, they'll really work you
11:13
Speaker 2: over there. They've got a gang of goons that enforced
11:16
Speaker 2: this with the iron fist. So we talked about how
11:19
Speaker 2: all of this. The quiet zone itself was established. Simultaneously,
11:23
Speaker 2: they're working on creating the actual observatory that's going to
11:28
Speaker 2: be in the middle of this quiet zone, and initially
11:31
Speaker 2: it was called the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in that
11:35
Speaker 2: town of Green Bank, which is in the center of
11:37
Speaker 2: the West Virginia Radio Astronomy Zone that was established in
11:41
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty six, and they started building telescopes, one bigger
11:45
Speaker 2: than the other. They started with the toattele eighty five
11:48
Speaker 2: foot back and then the three hundred foot telescope. They
11:51
Speaker 2: go one hundred and forty foot telescope, which are very
11:54
Speaker 2: boring names, but originally, as you might imagine, everybody is
11:59
Speaker 2: sociated with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory lived in this
12:05
Speaker 2: ultra quiet zone around the observatory, and they ran into
12:09
Speaker 2: some early problems where the employees are like, we can't
12:12
Speaker 2: live here.
12:12
Speaker 1: Sorry right, yeah, I mean they said, you know, the
12:16
Speaker 1: medical care and access to great healthcare is an awesome
12:20
Speaker 1: the schools here aren't great for my kids, and so
12:24
Speaker 1: they relocated the admin headquarters to the University of Virginia
12:28
Speaker 1: and Charlottesville. The researchers remained there on site in eighty eight,
12:33
Speaker 1: and I think that was in nineteen sixty five when
12:35
Speaker 1: they built most of this stuff, those big tall towers.
12:38
Speaker 1: In eighty eight, the three hundred foot telescope collapsed. The
12:41
Speaker 1: one hundred and forty foot said ha ha, But then
12:45
Speaker 1: it was replaced by the Robert C. Bird Green Bank
12:48
Speaker 1: Telescope in two thousand and one, which still stands today
12:51
Speaker 1: and not only stands, but it's like it is the
12:55
Speaker 1: largest fully steerable radio telescope in the world with get this,
12:59
Speaker 1: a two point three acre dish and almost five hundred
13:02
Speaker 1: feet four hundred and eighty five feet, which is twenty
13:05
Speaker 1: one and sixteen big macs.
13:08
Speaker 2: Is it?
13:09
Speaker 1: That's all for you, my friend?
13:10
Speaker 2: Thank you buddy. Wow, that was a delightful little line yap.
13:15
Speaker 2: What alan yap? We've talked about this before. Oh remind
13:19
Speaker 2: me a lane yap is just like a little something extra, Okay,
13:23
Speaker 2: and I find it incredibly obnoxious to use.
13:26
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's great and it sure beats the
13:29
Speaker 1: heck out of a cherry on top.
13:32
Speaker 2: Alright, let's come out with something else.
13:35
Speaker 1: The lineyap on top.
13:36
Speaker 2: Okay, there you go. There's one other thing that the
13:40
Speaker 2: Green Bank telescope, the one that's currently in use, can
13:43
Speaker 2: boast you ready for this? Yes, it has the world's
13:46
Speaker 2: largest ball bearing. Oh wow, the ball bearing inside of
13:52
Speaker 2: this thing that this massive telescope steers on.
13:55
Speaker 1: I can't wait.
13:56
Speaker 2: Seventeen and a half feet in diameter, wow, which means
13:59
Speaker 2: it's as big a as a male adult giraffe is tall.
14:05
Speaker 2: That's the best I could come up. I know it's awful,
14:09
Speaker 2: it's clumsy, but I could not come up with anything else.
14:12
Speaker 1: Hey, Alexa, what's seventeen feet tall?
14:17
Speaker 2: I asked Duck Dunco instead.
14:19
Speaker 1: Okay, and I'm sorry for everyone who's Alexi? Just triggered Alexa?
14:23
Speaker 2: Alexa, Alexa play one direction?
14:32
Speaker 1: Oh boy, that's good.
14:35
Speaker 2: You want to take a break while everybody's trying to
14:37
Speaker 2: turn off one direction?
14:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's take a break. We'll be right back.
14:57
Speaker 3: You came along and it was like, yeah, well we.
15:07
Speaker 1: Were work pals, all right. So within that thirteen thousand
15:12
Speaker 1: square mile rectangle, the National Radio Quite Zone, you cannot
15:17
Speaker 1: and this is where the restrictions begin, and we're gonna
15:20
Speaker 1: get more granular. You can't have any fixed or permanent
15:23
Speaker 1: transmitters installed unless you get approval from the NRQZ and
15:28
Speaker 1: the FCC.
15:30
Speaker 4: What's the NTIA, the National Telecommunications and Information Agency, Very obscure,
15:39
Speaker 4: but they supposedly are replacing FEMA as the new World
15:44
Speaker 4: orders jack boot troops.
15:46
Speaker 1: Okay, good to know. So you can't build any big,
15:50
Speaker 1: permanent things there. So that means just within that big
15:52
Speaker 1: thirteen thousand square mile rectangle, just somebody living there doesn't
15:58
Speaker 1: have to worry too much. That means that no company
16:00
Speaker 1: can come in and build something really.
16:02
Speaker 2: Big, right, That's really what we're looking at here. If
16:06
Speaker 2: you're in the actual thirteen thousand square mile thing, you
16:09
Speaker 2: don't have to really worry about a cell phone. The
16:12
Speaker 2: thing is that also means since there's no cell phone
16:16
Speaker 2: towers that are allowed there, your cell phone's going to
16:19
Speaker 2: be useless in a lot of places. I think that's
16:23
Speaker 2: fair enough to expect anyway, because Pocahontas County, which is
16:26
Speaker 2: where a lot of the main part, which is definitely
16:30
Speaker 2: where Green Bank is, I think three quarters of it
16:33
Speaker 2: is national and state protected wilderness. So you're not going
16:37
Speaker 2: to expect to get a cell phone signal there anyway.
16:40
Speaker 2: And if you're passing through this area, you're probably going
16:43
Speaker 2: to the quiet zone on purpose, so you can expect this.
16:47
Speaker 2: It's really just an issue if you actually live or
16:50
Speaker 2: work in this area, or you're a company trying to
16:53
Speaker 2: set up new infrastructure. That's really who's being affected by this.
16:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure if you read and I had heard
17:00
Speaker 1: of this before at some point, like I saw some
17:03
Speaker 1: news reporter read an article that portray it as like,
17:06
Speaker 1: you know, it's like going back in time basically, And
17:10
Speaker 1: we'll get to the ways that it is sort of
17:11
Speaker 1: like that, but it's not entirely like that. They've never
17:14
Speaker 1: entirely banned any kind of radio transmission. It's just really
17:18
Speaker 1: regulated like they have certain radio broadcasts because they have
17:21
Speaker 1: to have those emergency transmissions that we talked about in
17:24
Speaker 1: Communications in the Am Radio episode. Those have always been there.
17:29
Speaker 1: You can have TV. It is restricted, but they permit
17:33
Speaker 1: like cable TV and even satellite TV, which kind of
17:36
Speaker 1: surprises me. Yeah, and Wi Fi was not available for
17:40
Speaker 1: a long long time until I think just last year.
17:43
Speaker 1: But they could have wired internet with the Ethernet cable right.
17:48
Speaker 2: If it was wired, no problem, But the Wi Fi
17:50
Speaker 2: was going to produce a lot of problems because you're
17:53
Speaker 2: I mean, that's a your routers, a radio transmitter. So yeah,
17:57
Speaker 2: Apparently a lot of people, as we'll see, are like,
18:00
Speaker 2: well whatever, I'm still going to have Wi Fi, including
18:03
Speaker 2: Green Bank Observatory employees who live there. But it's still
18:09
Speaker 2: it's a big problem because if you live in that region,
18:14
Speaker 2: it still affects you in all sorts of ways. Like
18:17
Speaker 2: an It gives the example of if your car breaks down,
18:19
Speaker 2: you don't just call somebody on the cell phone be
18:21
Speaker 2: like I need a toe, Sure you're walking unless somebody
18:25
Speaker 2: friendly drives by who you know and trust. They probably
18:30
Speaker 2: had dinner at their house and will give you a
18:32
Speaker 2: ride to somewhere. People use payphones. As we'll see, you
18:37
Speaker 2: can definitely feel disconnected just from not having cell service,
18:41
Speaker 2: let alone from Wi Fi. But that said, I think
18:45
Speaker 2: we'll talk a little more about it later. But the
18:47
Speaker 2: people who work for Green Bank Observatory try to work
18:51
Speaker 2: with the community because although technically it's law that they
18:55
Speaker 2: can regulate this and punish people who violate these rules, don't.
19:00
Speaker 2: They are trying to keep a happy relationship with the
19:03
Speaker 2: community and figure out compromises that work for everybody. That's
19:07
Speaker 2: kind of that's what they try to do. I think
19:09
Speaker 2: if you talk to some of the people who live
19:11
Speaker 2: around there or elected officials around there, they might not
19:16
Speaker 2: necessarily agree with you, But that seems to be at
19:18
Speaker 2: least the mission of the Green Bank Observatory.
19:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, and again that's specifically the Green Bank, which is
19:23
Speaker 1: the most restrictive area where you're not gonna have any
19:26
Speaker 1: cell service and like I said, until very recently, no
19:30
Speaker 1: Wi Fi at all. There like no Bluetooth devices, no
19:34
Speaker 1: RC cars and trucks for the kids and playful adults,
19:39
Speaker 1: no microwaves. But like you said, I think you hinted
19:43
Speaker 1: at it a lot of people or some people, because
19:45
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of people there period, but some
19:48
Speaker 1: people move there for that reason. They want a simpler lifestyle,
19:52
Speaker 1: they want less technology. And we'll talk a little bit
19:54
Speaker 1: more about, you know, kind of some of the people
19:56
Speaker 1: that attracts because it can get very interesting, other peop
20:00
Speaker 1: people can get annoyed. Most people there probably just you know,
20:04
Speaker 1: that's where they've always lived and so that's just the deal.
20:07
Speaker 1: It's a way of life. I think in twenty sixteen
20:09
Speaker 1: that was an Italian graduate student named Jeffrero Carlini who
20:14
Speaker 1: traveled there to study like the people and were like,
20:18
Speaker 1: you know, what's it like for the people that live there?
20:21
Speaker 1: And he found and this is a very small scale study.
20:23
Speaker 1: It wasn't like the most robust scientific thing, but I
20:26
Speaker 1: think just walking around and studying and talking to people,
20:28
Speaker 1: he found that people seem to have lower anxiety there.
20:32
Speaker 1: But it's different. You know, they use maps, they use
20:35
Speaker 1: payphones still, just.
20:39
Speaker 2: The idea of not having access to like social media,
20:45
Speaker 2: and yeah, a lot just a lot of like modern
20:48
Speaker 2: life or having a cell phone, like being able to
20:51
Speaker 2: be contacted all the time. I can't help but think
20:55
Speaker 2: that yes, you as a group would have less anxiety
20:59
Speaker 2: on the.
20:59
Speaker 1: Whole, especially teens. I think it was Australia. Didn't they
21:03
Speaker 1: just pass a loss thing you couldn't be on social
21:04
Speaker 1: media until you were a certain.
21:06
Speaker 2: Age I think sixteen.
21:08
Speaker 1: Hats off to you guys, because yeah, that's how it
21:10
Speaker 1: should be. Teens there do have things like iPhones, they
21:16
Speaker 1: can't use them for textra calls. So there was one
21:18
Speaker 1: team that said, it's basically a clock and a calculator,
21:22
Speaker 1: so imagine imagine calculator. Watches are very much in style.
21:25
Speaker 2: Still, yeah, those cassio ones, Yeah, those are awesome. The
21:31
Speaker 2: thing is is this is all I mean as of
21:33
Speaker 2: last year I think, meaning twenty twenty five, but also
21:39
Speaker 2: some changes really started to take place, I think in
21:41
Speaker 2: the summer of twenty twenty four, like certain kinds of
21:44
Speaker 2: Wi Fi is now allowed, and things are now changing.
21:49
Speaker 2: I mean once you add widespread internet access, like the
21:54
Speaker 2: world's going to change or this area is going to
21:56
Speaker 2: change overnight. Basically the better writing imagine going right, Imagine
22:01
Speaker 2: going from nineteen ninety seven to twenty twenty five in
22:06
Speaker 2: this in the span of a day after installing a
22:10
Speaker 2: Wi Fi router in your house.
22:12
Speaker 1: Well, I mean that's one thing. Anna mentions sort of
22:14
Speaker 1: at the end of her research was like there was
22:16
Speaker 1: a while there where the Gulf was really big, like
22:19
Speaker 1: when you know, for the longest time, it was like, well,
22:22
Speaker 1: things aren't that much different, sure, but then once the
22:25
Speaker 1: Internet came along and then they weren't getting things like
22:27
Speaker 1: Wi Fi and Bluetooth, Like the golf got pretty wide
22:31
Speaker 1: there for a while. But like we said, it attracts
22:34
Speaker 1: a lot of interesting folks. There are certainly some some
22:38
Speaker 1: conspiracy theorists that go there on purpose. The National Alliance
22:42
Speaker 1: Headquarters for the Neo Nazis has been in Poconnas County
22:45
Speaker 1: for a long time. Obviously you're gonna get some hippies,
22:49
Speaker 1: some communes. There was a quasi cult perhaps called Zendic
22:54
Speaker 1: Farm that was there for a little while. They kind
22:57
Speaker 1: of moved all over I looked into them all over
22:59
Speaker 1: the United States, but ended up there until one of
23:04
Speaker 1: their dear leaders passed away in nineteen ninety nine. The
23:06
Speaker 1: other errols In Dick, passed away in twenty twelve, so
23:09
Speaker 1: that's when that kind of ended. And we'll talk about
23:13
Speaker 1: this last group toward the end. But most famously it's
23:16
Speaker 1: probably known and where you might have seen articles or
23:19
Speaker 1: news reports people moving there that suffer from electromagnetic hypersensitivity.
23:24
Speaker 2: Yeah. We'll talk a little bit more about that later, right. Yeah, So,
23:29
Speaker 2: if you have heard about this, is a good chance
23:33
Speaker 2: that you stumbled across a Wired article on it appropriately that.
23:39
Speaker 1: Might have been where I read about it.
23:40
Speaker 2: There's a guy named Stephen Curzy who's an author. He's
23:44
Speaker 2: a journalist who just kind of I was reading one
23:47
Speaker 2: of his Wired articles and he was talking about how
23:50
Speaker 2: he became kind of obsessed with the idea of living
23:53
Speaker 2: without a phone. Yeah yeah, and did so quite impressively
23:57
Speaker 2: for a very long time. And he found out about
23:59
Speaker 2: the National Radio Quiet Zone and was you know, naturally
24:01
Speaker 2: attracted to on to find out more about it. So
24:04
Speaker 2: we started hanging out there and writing about it. So
24:06
Speaker 2: a lot of the best information about what life is
24:10
Speaker 2: actually like in there and how things are actually done
24:14
Speaker 2: come from some of his reporting. And one of the
24:17
Speaker 2: things that he points out is that if you are
24:20
Speaker 2: caught using say like a cell phone within the like
24:25
Speaker 2: the two miles of the Green Bank Observatory, you are
24:29
Speaker 2: subject to a fifty dollars a day fine for as
24:31
Speaker 2: long as you're using that phone. That's right, And as
24:34
Speaker 2: far as Courgy can tell, absolutely no one in the
24:37
Speaker 2: history of the Green Bank Observatory has ever been fined,
24:40
Speaker 2: because again they're trying to do this all through cooperation
24:45
Speaker 2: rather than they're trying to use the carrot not the stick.
24:48
Speaker 1: I guess exactly. So if you're listening to your DVDs,
24:53
Speaker 1: your CDs, that's fine. You can't stream your music because
24:57
Speaker 1: there will be an enforcer that comes along to probably
25:01
Speaker 1: very kindly ask you. Enforcers not the right word at all,
25:05
Speaker 1: A nudger that will come along. And that job, for
25:09
Speaker 1: a very long time, was held by a man named
25:11
Speaker 1: Wesley Sizemore, which, by the way, this all spring I
25:14
Speaker 1: think a banger of a movie idea for me.
25:17
Speaker 2: Oh good, I can't wait to see it.
25:19
Speaker 1: You'll never see it, but I'll tell you about it
25:21
Speaker 1: one day. Okay, I'll blow the dust off the script
25:24
Speaker 1: and hand it to you.
25:25
Speaker 2: You don't know, it could be it could be your
25:27
Speaker 2: ticket to start them.
25:28
Speaker 1: Hey, you never know, But Wesley Sizemore did this job
25:31
Speaker 1: of enforcer. It's a guy who drives around in a
25:34
Speaker 1: truck or a van equipped with RFI identifying gear and
25:39
Speaker 1: look for this interference. Sometimes you say hey man, or
25:43
Speaker 1: they don't say hey man. He goes, hey, mister mister Ronald,
25:47
Speaker 1: because he probably knows everybody. Sure, at least in my script,
25:50
Speaker 1: he does and says, you know, you gotta you know
25:53
Speaker 1: you can't use that microwave. You gotta you gotta unplug
25:55
Speaker 1: that thing or just give it to me, so it's
25:57
Speaker 1: not a temptation. Sometimes he's goes, I can probably work
26:03
Speaker 1: something out for you that works without interference. Very famously,
26:09
Speaker 1: he is the guy. I think there was a malfunctioning
26:12
Speaker 1: electric blanket that was causing some interference, and so he
26:16
Speaker 1: went out and got one that worked. And you know,
26:18
Speaker 1: it's funded by the NRAO. Obviously he's not doing it
26:21
Speaker 1: out of his pocket, but apparently a lot of people
26:23
Speaker 1: in town sort of see him or saw him while
26:26
Speaker 1: he was doing the job. Is like a free repairman
26:27
Speaker 1: in town.
26:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, like, yeah, he'd just sit around and wait for
26:31
Speaker 2: Chuck Today to come find you and repair.
26:34
Speaker 1: He's the new guy.
26:36
Speaker 2: Oh sorry, yeah, that was Wesley Sizemore. Chuck Today is
26:39
Speaker 2: the new guy. You're right, He's been going since twenty eleven.
26:43
Speaker 2: As far as I can tell, he's still the guy
26:45
Speaker 2: who does this. I believe he has a background in
26:48
Speaker 2: electrical engineering and one of the things that like green
26:53
Speaker 2: Bank does, including Chuck today and working with people who
26:58
Speaker 2: like want to put up some sort of radio ten
27:00
Speaker 2: they'll actually help you design it so that it works
27:04
Speaker 2: really well, but it doesn't interfere with the telescope.
27:07
Speaker 1: Like.
27:07
Speaker 2: That's the level of coordination and cooperation they're doing ideally.
27:11
Speaker 2: And Chuck Naday is one of those guys. He goes
27:13
Speaker 2: around and finds, you know, who's using Wi Fi routers,
27:17
Speaker 2: but also kind of his hands on as well, helping
27:21
Speaker 2: come up with solutions.
27:22
Speaker 1: Basically, yeah, I don't know if you have your phone,
27:24
Speaker 1: but I just texted you a picture of Chuck Nadae
27:27
Speaker 1: or Nadai. He looks exactly like you would think. He
27:31
Speaker 1: looks like like like the dude super friendly that drives
27:35
Speaker 1: around in this truck full of electric gear looking too
27:40
Speaker 1: friendly solve problems in a friendly way like Steven. Basically, no, no, no,
27:44
Speaker 1: not at all. Did I ever tell you about being behind
27:47
Speaker 1: Steven Sagall's house in.
27:49
Speaker 2: La No, this one's new.
27:52
Speaker 1: I think I talked about being in meat Loaf's house
27:55
Speaker 1: at one point or another. Yeah, it's a cherry on.
28:00
Speaker 2: Top called again the land yap on top.
28:03
Speaker 1: The land yap. On top of that story that I
28:05
Speaker 1: don't think I ever revealed, or I may have, and
28:06
Speaker 1: it was years ago, was that Steven Sagall lived behind him.
28:10
Speaker 1: And I knew this because when I was jumping on
28:13
Speaker 1: the trampoline and Meatloaf's backyard, every time I went up,
28:16
Speaker 1: I saw these little like Asian pagoda tops that looked
28:20
Speaker 1: like little tops of little taj mahaws. And I was like,
28:23
Speaker 1: what is that? And they were like, that's Sagal's place.
28:27
Speaker 2: Are you sure that he didn't mean George Sigaal.
28:29
Speaker 1: Oh, well, this is George Siegeal, but sure that would
28:34
Speaker 1: have been a twist.
28:35
Speaker 2: Yeah. So did you see Steven Sagal there?
28:38
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, no, no, I remember. No matter how
28:40
Speaker 1: high I jumped, I could not get a picture.
28:43
Speaker 2: I remember I read there was a GQ profile, I believe,
28:47
Speaker 2: years and years and years ago about him, and the
28:50
Speaker 2: title of it was the biggest liar in Hollywood.
28:52
Speaker 1: Oh jeez. Yeah.
28:54
Speaker 2: It was not a good guy. It was a viscerating Yeah.
28:57
Speaker 2: I would I would recommend going and reading it.
28:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll check it out.
29:01
Speaker 5: Yeah, just added to her, should we take a break.
29:06
Speaker 5: I feel like, yes, okay, all right, we're going to
29:09
Speaker 5: take a break and we're going to talk about what
29:11
Speaker 5: they're doing out there.
29:12
Speaker 3: Right after this, you came along and it was like, yeah,
29:39
Speaker 3: well we were work pals.
29:42
Speaker 2: Okay, Chuck. So we were talking about how cell phone
29:46
Speaker 2: towers and transmitters like that, like GPS transmitters, that kind
29:51
Speaker 2: of thing, like commercial grade stuff are really the biggest
29:54
Speaker 2: problem for the telescopes. The reason why, I don't think
29:57
Speaker 2: we said the reason why. It's not just interfering.
30:00
Speaker 1: Right.
30:00
Speaker 2: I saw a side by side picture of a radio telescope.
30:04
Speaker 2: I think of a pulsear U and one of the
30:08
Speaker 2: same thing, but with a lot of interference, and it's
30:11
Speaker 2: just like, yeah, it'd be impossible to pick some of
30:14
Speaker 2: this stuff out. Interference is one problem. Another problem is
30:18
Speaker 2: is that, remember how sensitive those telescopes are, Their amplifiers
30:23
Speaker 2: get blown out really easily. There was a in that
30:28
Speaker 2: article they're talking about Chuck to day helping fashion an
30:31
Speaker 2: antenna for a smoke alarm, and they were like, if
30:35
Speaker 2: this smoke alarm went off and it sent this message
30:38
Speaker 2: out through the antenna, if we didn't make it right,
30:40
Speaker 2: it would blow the Green Bank telescope, Like it would
30:44
Speaker 2: blow the amplifier out like, that's all it would take.
30:47
Speaker 2: So that's really there's a couple of problems with it, right,
30:50
Speaker 2: But there's also another problem that very few people can
30:54
Speaker 2: do anything about, and that is from all of the
30:56
Speaker 2: satellites that are in orbit these days.
30:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, especially the low earth orbit satellites. Not
31:03
Speaker 1: only are youre going to get visible light pollution, which
31:05
Speaker 1: is its own problem with all the telescopes, but radio
31:08
Speaker 1: interference is a big problem. So what they're doing there, again,
31:12
Speaker 1: these seem like the greatest bunch of people because they
31:15
Speaker 1: don't come at it again with the stick. They're like, hey,
31:18
Speaker 1: let's work together to make sure you can do what
31:22
Speaker 1: you need to do and we can still do what
31:24
Speaker 1: we need to do. So they're working on developing what's
31:26
Speaker 1: called a National Radio Dynamic Zone, which is a collaborative
31:31
Speaker 1: initiative basically between the two well not two groups, between
31:35
Speaker 1: one group and a lot of other groups that have
31:36
Speaker 1: these satellites to try and just talk with each other
31:40
Speaker 1: better and make sure that they can all, like I said,
31:42
Speaker 1: get their jobs done. They don't have a permanent home yet,
31:46
Speaker 1: but they're working on it.
31:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're trying to build a research center where satellite
31:50
Speaker 2: operators can test new technologies that will let satellites work
31:55
Speaker 2: but minimize radio interference. Hopefully they get that up because
32:00
Speaker 2: there's a huge problem with radio and light pollution from satellites,
32:05
Speaker 2: and we're just adding more and more and more every year.
32:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. All right. So if you were thinking, guys,
32:14
Speaker 1: when are you going to talk about aliens, now's the
32:17
Speaker 1: time because we've talked about kind of the things they're
32:19
Speaker 1: doing there, and this is one of the things they're
32:20
Speaker 1: doing there. One of the very first projects they started
32:24
Speaker 1: out on years ago was what would be the origins
32:28
Speaker 1: of SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. In nineteen fifty nine,
32:33
Speaker 1: the NRAO researcher named Frank Drake launched a study called
32:38
Speaker 1: prozac Ozma, so named for one of L. Frankbaum's characters
32:42
Speaker 1: in his oz books. He started looking for life out there,
32:46
Speaker 1: and while it didn't work initially, that really launched what
32:50
Speaker 1: SETI would become.
32:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, Frank Drake, we've talked about him plenty of times.
32:55
Speaker 2: He came up with the Drake equation, which is a
32:57
Speaker 2: really interesting formula for trying to figure out how how
33:00
Speaker 2: many intelligent civilizations might be in the universe. He's the
33:04
Speaker 2: guy who came up with that, and green Bank is
33:07
Speaker 2: the place where he came up with it because he
33:09
Speaker 2: was working there. And he also hosted a pretty pretty
33:14
Speaker 2: rock and party, a rock and party that featured Carl Sagan,
33:19
Speaker 2: a guy named Melvin Calvin who's a biochemist John Lilly,
33:23
Speaker 2: who he talked about the whacked out dolphin researcher used
33:26
Speaker 2: to give acid to dolphins. Yeah, and they so Frank
33:30
Speaker 2: Drake came up with the Drake equation as basically the
33:32
Speaker 2: agenda for this conference, and then they kind of hashed
33:35
Speaker 2: it out and they very famously calculated that there's at
33:39
Speaker 2: least ten thousand advanced intelligent alien civilizations just in the
33:44
Speaker 2: Milky Way galaxy. If you don't know about the Drake equation,
33:48
Speaker 2: go look it up. It'll open up a whole world
33:50
Speaker 2: of interesting stuff with you. But the upshot is is,
33:53
Speaker 2: like you said, this still continues today because this research
33:57
Speaker 2: at green Bank, essentially thanks to Frank and others, gave
34:01
Speaker 2: birth to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligencer SETI, and SETI
34:07
Speaker 2: is still performed at the Green Bank Telescope to this day.
34:11
Speaker 1: Has the Rapper Drake ever put out a song or
34:13
Speaker 1: album called The Drake Equation.
34:16
Speaker 2: No, but I'm glad you I don't know.
34:18
Speaker 1: He may have, he should have. If he hasn't, it
34:20
Speaker 1: seems like a no brainer.
34:22
Speaker 2: I'm glad you brought that up, though, because i'd heard
34:24
Speaker 2: of the Quiet Zone before, I didn't know much about it.
34:26
Speaker 2: But the thing that prompted this episode is one of
34:29
Speaker 2: our listeners, a guy named Andrew Phelps. He's a photographer
34:33
Speaker 2: and with another photographer named Paul Kransler, they went to
34:38
Speaker 2: the quiet Zone around Green Bank and took like they
34:41
Speaker 2: basically made a photo documentary of life in the area.
34:46
Speaker 2: Oh cool, And they named their book Drake Equation and
34:48
Speaker 2: they sent us a copy. So hats off for those
34:51
Speaker 2: guys for the book, for making the book and sending
34:55
Speaker 2: it to us.
34:56
Speaker 1: I thought you were talking about someone else at first,
34:57
Speaker 1: because I wish I could remember his name. I follow
34:59
Speaker 1: him on Instagram. Now there's a listener that is an
35:04
Speaker 1: astro or astral photographer, where basically he's I don't know
35:09
Speaker 1: where he goes to get these pictures. It's obviously in
35:12
Speaker 1: another quiet zones of the world, or at least dark
35:15
Speaker 1: places you know, and gets and it's not just like
35:19
Speaker 1: he sets up a nice camera and does a long
35:22
Speaker 1: exposure like it's really sophisticated equipment and process that he
35:28
Speaker 1: goes through to get stuff that looks like it doesn't
35:31
Speaker 1: look real. It's like, you know, celestial bodies that like
35:35
Speaker 1: it looks like some AI generated art. It's incredible stuff.
35:40
Speaker 2: I think if it was an astral photographer, he'd be
35:43
Speaker 2: taking pictures of like auras.
35:45
Speaker 1: Or Yeah, I.
35:48
Speaker 2: Tell him to make sure you figure out that guy's name.
35:51
Speaker 1: I will, and I'll follow up on an episode. I'll
35:53
Speaker 1: see if I can find it. It's really really impressive,
35:56
Speaker 1: super cool and very just a super cool, hyper specific
36:00
Speaker 1: art form. I think.
36:01
Speaker 3: You know.
36:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, or people, if you can't wait, they can go
36:04
Speaker 2: to you chuck the podcast or on Instagram and look
36:07
Speaker 2: at who you follow and figure it out.
36:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, thank you. I followed Josh M Clark do
36:13
Speaker 1: you of course I do.
36:15
Speaker 2: I follow you too?
36:16
Speaker 1: Yeah.
36:17
Speaker 2: Thanks?
36:17
Speaker 1: Are you just now realizing that, yeah, well you don't
36:21
Speaker 1: post much?
36:22
Speaker 2: No, I really don't. I got treat you. I want
36:25
Speaker 2: to say I shit more, but I shouldn't. It just fine.
36:28
Speaker 1: I think you're doing just great.
36:30
Speaker 2: Well, you do great too.
36:32
Speaker 1: Hey. You know who also does great? Jerry?
36:35
Speaker 2: She does do great, doesn't she? All right?
36:39
Speaker 1: We're okay. We were talking about things that go on there,
36:41
Speaker 1: SETI Another thing that might not surprise you is military
36:45
Speaker 1: intelligence goes on there. Many years ago, they started something
36:50
Speaker 1: called the Sugar Grove Research Station that at the time
36:53
Speaker 1: called the sugar Grove US Naval Radio Station. This is
36:56
Speaker 1: a nineteen fifty nine when the Navy started building what
37:01
Speaker 1: was going to be the world's largest radio antenna. It
37:03
Speaker 1: was called the Big Ear where they were going to
37:06
Speaker 1: listen in and intercept, you know, Russian intel. They never
37:10
Speaker 1: finished the Big Ear because they were worried it was
37:13
Speaker 1: not structurally sound. So rather than moving on to the
37:17
Speaker 1: Medium Ear, I guess they didn't think it sounded cool enough,
37:20
Speaker 1: they just scrapped it all together. But they still have
37:22
Speaker 1: a station at Sugar Grove, and the NSA is also there,
37:27
Speaker 1: so I'm sure it's all on the up and up
37:30
Speaker 1: as so far as who and what they're listening to.
37:32
Speaker 2: Well, actually I saw, actually, Chuck, I saw that the
37:36
Speaker 2: NSA abandoned Sugar Grove.
37:39
Speaker 1: Oh, they're not there in like the last year, okay.
37:42
Speaker 2: And it's for sale. You can buy the whole dang town,
37:47
Speaker 2: the which has like a number of houses it has
37:50
Speaker 2: like a recycling planet has everything also much just I
37:54
Speaker 2: think the the highest bid recently was like eleven point
37:58
Speaker 2: six million dollars, and I guess it was a joke
38:01
Speaker 2: because they couldn't come through with it. So I think
38:03
Speaker 2: if you come up with eleven million dollars, they'd be
38:06
Speaker 2: happy to take it, and you could probably get it
38:08
Speaker 2: for less.
38:09
Speaker 1: Wow. I mean, considering what Kim Basinger paid for Brazlton,
38:13
Speaker 1: Georgia in the eighties or nineties, how.
38:15
Speaker 2: Much was it? Do you remember?
38:17
Speaker 1: It was a lot? Was it? I think so? But
38:21
Speaker 1: I mean that was she bought a town.
38:24
Speaker 2: I remember. Does she still own it?
38:26
Speaker 1: No, she got out of the Braselton business.
38:30
Speaker 2: She had the market corner for a minute, though.
38:32
Speaker 1: I usually don't look these things up. Guess what the
38:35
Speaker 1: aioverview talks about the average home sale price?
38:38
Speaker 2: Oh wow, how surprising.
38:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, and home is misspelled. I'll find it at some point.
38:46
Speaker 2: You can continue, Okay, So there's also been a bunch
38:49
Speaker 2: of great scientific discoveries there, as you can imagine.
38:52
Speaker 1: Twenty million dollars in nineteen eighty nine.
38:55
Speaker 2: Do you know how much she sold the town for?
38:58
Speaker 1: No? No, I'm not gonna look that up either. Some
39:00
Speaker 1: things have to be left at the imagination.
39:02
Speaker 2: I think that's great, Chuck. Plus the AI overview just
39:06
Speaker 2: shrugged a shrug. Emogium.
39:09
Speaker 1: All right, I interrupted. You were talking about scientific discoveries.
39:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we're talking radio astronomy. So there's stuff like
39:15
Speaker 2: interstellar molecules. Some of the first ones were discovered. I
39:18
Speaker 2: think half of the interstellar molecules we know about were
39:21
Speaker 2: discovered in the sixties at Green Bank, like pictures of pulsars,
39:28
Speaker 2: and we understand the universe a lot more thanks to it.
39:30
Speaker 2: But they're also really arcane, I guess, discoveries that seemed
39:37
Speaker 2: like they were just like total, like they would only
39:40
Speaker 2: interest like two people. For example, the z it was
39:44
Speaker 2: the first detection of Zeman splitting. Zeman splitting is where
39:49
Speaker 2: spectral lines, you know, those black bands like on the
39:52
Speaker 2: on the spectrum, just kind of pop up the spectral
39:55
Speaker 2: lines they split in the presence of a magnetic field.
40:00
Speaker 2: That was discovered at Green Bank Observatory. And you might say, like, great,
40:04
Speaker 2: who cares, But this is just one of those things
40:07
Speaker 2: that shows you how science builds on science. This actually
40:10
Speaker 2: confirmed quantum theory for the first time because it showed
40:14
Speaker 2: that electrons respond to magnetic fields, and it proved a
40:18
Speaker 2: lot of like the math that had been proposed for
40:22
Speaker 2: quantum theory but hadn't been confirmed yet. That discovery at
40:26
Speaker 2: Green Bank Observatory confirmed it. That's just one of a
40:29
Speaker 2: number of incomprehensible discoveries that were made there. So it
40:33
Speaker 2: is important. This isn't just a group of astronomers who
40:37
Speaker 2: want their cake. They're just fat little bully boys or
40:41
Speaker 2: anything like that. They are actual, like important. There was
40:45
Speaker 2: important work being carried out because this is such a
40:48
Speaker 2: unique place.
40:49
Speaker 1: Oh man, the mental picture was astoundings that just came
40:53
Speaker 1: over me, all right. So we mentioned earlier on people
40:56
Speaker 1: that moved there that suffer from what's called electro magnetic hypersensitivity.
41:02
Speaker 1: This may be where you have read about it or
41:04
Speaker 1: seen news reports because there's a woman named Diane Shall
41:08
Speaker 1: I guess s h o W who has been there
41:12
Speaker 1: for a long time, and she's she's basically the most
41:16
Speaker 1: kind of the foremost sufferer of EHS. She moved to
41:21
Speaker 1: the NRCUSE a while ago, got fourteen acres near Green Bank,
41:26
Speaker 1: founded the Wave Analysis Verification Research not a ciner just so,
41:36
Speaker 1: I guess so. But it's a nonprofit and basically she
41:40
Speaker 1: she went there to live more healthily for her own
41:45
Speaker 1: needs and to also do research on the disease and
41:48
Speaker 1: also help bring people in and educate and care for
41:51
Speaker 1: people with the disease. And the idea is that people
41:55
Speaker 1: are super sensitive obviously to electromagnetic ways and they feel
42:01
Speaker 1: like it gets them sick, headaches, nausea, dizziness, chest pain,
42:04
Speaker 1: hair loss, and I say feels like because it's never
42:09
Speaker 1: been proven that this is a real thing.
42:11
Speaker 2: Right now, one of the things that really undermines the
42:15
Speaker 2: concept of electromagnetic hypersensitivity is an actual medical condition is
42:19
Speaker 2: that people who suffer from it can't reliably tell when
42:24
Speaker 2: they're in the presence of electromagnetic frequencies. Right They've been
42:29
Speaker 2: given tests and tests and tests where they are being
42:32
Speaker 2: bombarded with an electromagnetic pulse, and next they say that
42:37
Speaker 2: they are and they're they're not actually being bombarded with it,
42:41
Speaker 2: and they can't say, like, yes, now I'm being exposed
42:45
Speaker 2: to electromagnetic radiation, now I'm not. So that alone makes
42:50
Speaker 2: it seem like it's simply a psychological disorder y or
42:53
Speaker 2: no cebo effect that people are being like their symptoms
42:57
Speaker 2: are real, like they're losing their hair. They're not pulling
43:00
Speaker 2: it out in secret and saying I lost my hair
43:03
Speaker 2: because of this. Their symptoms are real. What's causing it
43:07
Speaker 2: seems to just be in their mind. I say that though,
43:10
Speaker 2: with the kernel of salt, grain of salt, because there
43:17
Speaker 2: have been diseases before that were treated like this initially
43:22
Speaker 2: and it turned out like, no, these people were just
43:23
Speaker 2: a group of mistreated sufferers who actually were suffering from
43:26
Speaker 2: something that's now recognized. So it's possible that's the case.
43:30
Speaker 2: And even if that's not the case, these people actually
43:33
Speaker 2: are suffering, So the World Health Organization recognizes it as
43:39
Speaker 2: a medical condition, but a medical condition that warrants further
43:43
Speaker 2: study figure out what the heck's going on and how
43:46
Speaker 2: to actually help people who suffer from this, regardless of
43:50
Speaker 2: what the cause is.
43:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, And if either way, in either case,
43:56
Speaker 1: it's really great that Diane Shaw and whoever has met
44:01
Speaker 1: her and followed her there have a place to go
44:04
Speaker 1: where it is quiet for them, you know.
44:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, And if you're like this kind of sounds familiar.
44:10
Speaker 2: Lenny from Laverne and Shirley on Better Call Saul. He
44:14
Speaker 2: suffered from electromagnetic hypersensitivity.
44:18
Speaker 1: I did not see that show. It's still on the
44:20
Speaker 1: long list. But I thought you were going to say
44:23
Speaker 1: Julian Moore and the Todd Haynes film Safe, But that
44:27
Speaker 1: was a little different. I think that was and I
44:29
Speaker 1: don't know the name for it, but the people that
44:31
Speaker 1: think it's like everything's dirty and everything is going to
44:36
Speaker 1: get them sick. Hypochondria, No, but more of I mean,
44:43
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's maybe a subset of hypochondria, but it's
44:46
Speaker 1: like everything is dirty, everything I touch will get me sick.
44:49
Speaker 1: Everything there's everything's tainted and dangerous and germy.
44:55
Speaker 2: I mean, that's just normal for me, right, No, to.
44:59
Speaker 1: The point where they can't function in the world.
45:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't mean to make light of it.
45:03
Speaker 1: No, I know. I know what you mean though, but
45:05
Speaker 1: you're the whole journeys.
45:07
Speaker 2: The whole thing reminds me of our episode from twenty
45:10
Speaker 2: fourteen about Morgelon's disease.
45:12
Speaker 1: Remember that, Oh yeah, what was that again.
45:15
Speaker 2: It's where people, I think, think they're suffering from something
45:18
Speaker 2: that comes out of their skin, and when they bring
45:20
Speaker 2: samples of what they think is like this evidence that
45:24
Speaker 2: they're sick, it turns out to be like lint or
45:27
Speaker 2: thread from a code or just the smallest, weirdest stuff. Yeah,
45:31
Speaker 2: and they're like, this doesn't exist, guys, And I don't
45:34
Speaker 2: know where it left off, but it was really.
45:36
Speaker 1: Interesting, that's right, and a nice way to remind people
45:40
Speaker 1: that Morglon's disease is and from the old vault, and
45:43
Speaker 1: there are lots and lots of episodes in the vault
45:46
Speaker 1: that you probably don't even know about unless you've been
45:48
Speaker 1: listening for SIS seventeen years.
45:49
Speaker 2: Sure, coming up on eighteen, that's right in April. So
45:54
Speaker 2: what's going on with the National Radio Quiet Zone, Chuck?
45:59
Speaker 1: It's still that's still putting along, you know. They're still
46:02
Speaker 1: trying to work it out with the satellites in orbit
46:06
Speaker 1: near them. They're still trying to work it out with
46:07
Speaker 1: the residents, and they're keeping on keeping on.
46:12
Speaker 2: There were two things that happened recently, well one not
46:15
Speaker 2: too recently, but one very recently. The National Science Foundation
46:19
Speaker 2: turned the Green Bank Observatory out, said we're done with you. Oh,
46:23
Speaker 2: and it looked like the end of it. I think
46:24
Speaker 2: back in like twenty twelve, it looked like the end
46:26
Speaker 2: of the observatory. And instead everybody who worked there banded
46:30
Speaker 2: together and looks for private funding, and now it's privately funded.
46:35
Speaker 1: Oh that's cool.
46:36
Speaker 2: The other thing that happened is that they seem to
46:39
Speaker 2: have figured out how to address the Wi Fi issue
46:43
Speaker 2: for everybody, and that was starlink, the basically global Internet.
46:52
Speaker 2: They figured out that if you use fixed starlink where
46:55
Speaker 2: like you're just using it in your house, you're not
46:57
Speaker 2: moving around using it, it does disrupt the function of
47:01
Speaker 2: the radio telescope. The problem is if you use like
47:05
Speaker 2: the moving around the mobile version to where like it's
47:09
Speaker 2: you're getting signals, say like on your phone while you're driving,
47:12
Speaker 2: that messes with the telescope. So for ninety five point
47:16
Speaker 2: five percent of the population around Green Bank, their their
47:21
Speaker 2: problem is solved because they can use the fixed starlink.
47:24
Speaker 2: For that other point five percent, though, it's a big
47:26
Speaker 2: problem because emergency medical services wanted to use starlink to
47:31
Speaker 2: communicate with each other to respond to emergencies, and now
47:35
Speaker 2: they're like, we can't use radios, we can't use starlink,
47:37
Speaker 2: what are we gonna do? And that's kind of where
47:39
Speaker 2: it stands right now. There's a there at an impasse
47:42
Speaker 2: trying to figure out how to let ems do its thing.
47:46
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, and again as of just August of last
47:48
Speaker 1: years when they were allowed the Wi Fi. But I
47:50
Speaker 1: don't think we said the speed at a robust two
47:52
Speaker 1: point four.
47:54
Speaker 2: What is it?
47:55
Speaker 1: I don't even know what it is that that slow
47:57
Speaker 1: mega something gigaherts, gigaherts.
48:00
Speaker 2: And I think the reason why they allowed that is
48:02
Speaker 2: I read that because there's so many Wi Fi routers
48:06
Speaker 2: operating on two point four now that that band of
48:09
Speaker 2: the radio universe is just it's just trash. Now. You
48:13
Speaker 2: can't do astronomy on it anyway, So I think.
48:16
Speaker 1: They were extrata on it.
48:17
Speaker 2: No, you can't, don't even try. Yeah, you got anything else?
48:22
Speaker 1: I got nothing else?
48:23
Speaker 2: Okay, I think then everybody that means it's time for
48:26
Speaker 2: listener mail.
48:30
Speaker 1: This sort of ties in a little bit. It's about
48:32
Speaker 1: the AM radio episode because we mentioned it was an
48:34
Speaker 1: important alert system still and this happened to Hannah from
48:39
Speaker 1: Texas in twenty sixteen. When Hannah lived in Denham Springs, Louisiana,
48:42
Speaker 1: it was hit by a terrible flood that knocked out
48:44
Speaker 1: cell phone communications. So it was like Green Bank for
48:47
Speaker 1: a short time. Guys. We still had enough Internet to
48:50
Speaker 1: receive information, but couldn't send anything, so we had gotten
48:53
Speaker 1: word that we could tune into a specific AM radio
48:55
Speaker 1: station each evening between a certain time to hear families
48:58
Speaker 1: who were calling and asking if our loved ones were okay.
49:01
Speaker 1: My partner at the time and I would go out
49:03
Speaker 1: to my car, turn on the radio and listen, and
49:05
Speaker 1: every evening we got updates on who was looking for who,
49:07
Speaker 1: who was on the way to help us or not,
49:09
Speaker 1: and who had been marked as safe. Sure enough, a
49:12
Speaker 1: couple of days in we heard my mom calling in
49:14
Speaker 1: to try and confirm that her baby girl me was okay.
49:18
Speaker 2: Wow.
49:18
Speaker 1: We also got word that my dad, who was part
49:21
Speaker 1: of the Cajun Navy at the time, haven't even looked
49:24
Speaker 1: that up yet, but that's I absolutely need to find
49:26
Speaker 1: out what that is.
49:27
Speaker 2: I guarantee it's interesting.
49:30
Speaker 1: Nice we would be that they would be headed our
49:34
Speaker 1: way if they didn't get word. With the next couple
49:36
Speaker 1: of days, we were able to through a long chain
49:39
Speaker 1: of communication though, to let my family know we were okay,
49:42
Speaker 1: and we heard our own names marked as alive and well,
49:44
Speaker 1: which was surreal on the AM radio, and a few
49:47
Speaker 1: days later we were able to coordinate our evacuation using
49:50
Speaker 1: that same am radio station. Wow, I know it's pretty great.
49:54
Speaker 1: I've been listening to you guys for years, and you
49:56
Speaker 1: never cease to delight me with your jokes, references, and
49:58
Speaker 1: general information. I recommend you to everyone I meet. Much appreciated. Hannah,
50:02
Speaker 1: and I frequently cite your episodes when sharing fun facts
50:05
Speaker 1: with coworkers and friends. Hannah from Texas.
50:07
Speaker 2: Man, Hannah, thank you. I'm glad you guys are okay
50:10
Speaker 2: over there, and that was an amazing email. That was
50:14
Speaker 2: one of the tops. Hannah. Agree, can get a sash
50:17
Speaker 2: that says as much. If you want to be like
50:21
Speaker 2: Anna and send us a top email, we would love
50:23
Speaker 2: to get that. You can send it off to us
50:25
Speaker 2: at stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
50:31
Speaker 5: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
50:34
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50:39
Speaker 5: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,