Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
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.
To that's right. And we're not talking about Palm Springs with their oppressive band on outdoor music.
Oh, I hadn't heard about that.
Yeah, you can't play music outside like by your pool.
Huh at all?
Supposedly at all?
Well, I guess it probably just depends on your neighbor.
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.
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.
No, we're talking about the opposite of Palm Springs, which is Appalachia.
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.
Someone's going to do that. Yeah, they're going to fold a map up and send us a correction.
Yeah, they'll be like Josh's way off.
Well, you know where they might fold a map up is in the National Radio Quiet Zone because they still use those things.
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 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 their business happily.
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.
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.
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, 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 we're going to call it radio astronomy.
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, 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?
Is it named after Carl?
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
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 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 difficult over the years for the National Radio Quiet Zone.
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?
Is a janski is like point twenty six zeros of one single watt?
Well, I just meant a sort of a regular interval like a something watt like a reggie watch.
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.
Okay, I got you. You miss my joke.
Oh well I need to hear it. I gotten.
No, I'm going I'm gonna let you hear it in QA when you listen to it.
So great, I have a future humiliation ahead of No.
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.
I can't wait to hear it.
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 we're talking about.
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
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 quiet zone and where you would make one of those things.
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,
probably a pretty limited population. By the way, thanks for Anna for this when she did a great job on this.
Yeah, she really did.
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 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.
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.
Yeah, they kind of laid the groundwork, I feel like.
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 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.
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 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 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 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.
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.
If you think about Wi Fi there that you're fired.
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 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 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 live here.
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, 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 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.
Is it?
That's all for you, my friend?
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.
Well, I think it's great and it sure beats the heck out of a cherry on top.
Alright, let's come out with something else.
The lineyap on top.
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.
I can't wait.
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.
Hey, Alexa, what's seventeen feet tall?
I asked Duck Dunco instead.
Okay, and I'm sorry for everyone who's Alexi? Just triggered Alexa?
Alexa, Alexa play one direction?
Oh boy, that's good.
You want to take a break while everybody's trying to turn off one direction?
Yeah, let's take a break. We'll be right back.
You came along and it was like, yeah, well we.
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 the FCC.
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.
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.
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 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. 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.
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 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 a long long time until I think just last year. But they could have wired internet with the Ethernet cable right.
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 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 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 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 necessarily agree with you, But that seems to be at least the mission of the Green Bank Observatory.
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 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, 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 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.
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.
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.
Age I think sixteen.
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.
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. 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 Wi Fi router in your house.
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 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 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 probably known and where you might have seen articles or news reports people moving there that suffer from electromagnetic hypersensitivity.
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.
Might have been where I read about it.
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 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 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.
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 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.
Oh good, I can't wait to see it.
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.
You don't know, it could be it could be your ticket to start them.
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, 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 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.
Yeah, like, yeah, he'd just sit around and wait for Chuck Today to come find you and repair.
He's the new guy.
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 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.
Like.
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.
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, not at all. Did I ever tell you about being behind Steven Sagall's house in.
La No, this one's new.
I think I talked about being in meat Loaf's house at one point or another. Yeah, it's a cherry on.
Top called again the land yap on top.
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, what is that? And they were like, that's Sagal's place.
Are you sure that he didn't mean George Sigaal.
Oh, well, this is George Siegeal, but sure that would have been a twist.
Yeah. So did you see Steven Sagal there?
Oh no, no, no, no, I remember. No matter how high I jumped, I could not get a picture.
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.
Oh jeez. Yeah.
It was not a good guy. It was a viscerating Yeah. I would I would recommend going and reading it.
Yeah, I'll check it out.
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.
Right after this, you came along and it was like, yeah, well we were work pals.
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.
Right.
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
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 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.
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 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, get their jobs done. They don't have a permanent home yet, but they're working on it.
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.
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, 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.
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 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 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 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.
Has the Rapper Drake ever put out a song or album called The Drake Equation.
No, but I'm glad you I don't know.
He may have, he should have. If he hasn't, it seems like a no brainer.
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. 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.
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 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.
I think if it was an astral photographer, he'd be taking pictures of like auras.
Or Yeah, I.
Tell him to make sure you figure out that guy's name.
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.
You know.
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.
Yeah, sure, thank you. I followed Josh M Clark do you of course I do.
I follow you too?
Yeah.
Thanks?
Are you just now realizing that, yeah, well you don't post much?
No, I really don't. I got treat you. I want to say I shit more, but I shouldn't. It just fine.
I think you're doing just great.
Well, you do great too.
Hey. You know who also does great? Jerry?
She does do great, doesn't she? All right?
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 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 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.
Well, actually I saw, actually, Chuck, I saw that the NSA abandoned Sugar Grove.
Oh, they're not there in like the last year, okay.
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 if you come up with eleven million dollars, they'd be happy to take it, and you could probably get it for less.
Wow. I mean, considering what Kim Basinger paid for Brazlton, Georgia in the eighties or nineties, how.
Much was it? Do you remember?
It was a lot? Was it? I think so? But I mean that was she bought a town.
I remember. Does she still own it?
No, she got out of the Braselton business.
She had the market corner for a minute, though.
I usually don't look these things up. Guess what the aioverview talks about the average home sale price?
Oh wow, how surprising.
Yeah, and home is misspelled. I'll find it at some point.
You can continue, Okay, So there's also been a bunch of great scientific discoveries there, as you can imagine.
Twenty million dollars in nineteen eighty nine.
Do you know how much she sold the town for?
No? No, I'm not gonna look that up either. Some things have to be left at the imagination.
I think that's great, Chuck. Plus the AI overview just shrugged a shrug. Emogium.
All right, I interrupted. You were talking about scientific discoveries.
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 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. 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 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 important work being carried out because this is such a unique place.
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 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, 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 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.
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 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 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 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 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.
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.
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.
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, 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.
I mean, that's just normal for me, right, No, to.
The point where they can't function in the world.
Yeah, I don't mean to make light of it.
No, I know. I know what you mean though, but you're the whole journeys.
The whole thing reminds me of our episode from twenty fourteen about Morgelon's disease.
Remember that, Oh yeah, what was that again.
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.
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.
Sure, coming up on eighteen, that's right in April. So what's going on with the National Radio Quiet Zone, Chuck?
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.
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.
Oh that's cool.
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 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 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 trying to figure out how to let ems do its thing.
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.
What is it?
I don't even know what it is that that slow mega something gigaherts, gigaherts.
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.
They were extrata on it.
No, you can't, don't even try. Yeah, you got anything else?
I got nothing else?
Okay, I think then everybody that means it's time for listener mail.
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 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 to try and confirm that her baby girl me was okay.
Wow.
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.
I guarantee it's interesting.
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.
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.
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.
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