Popular Mechanics (South Africa)
THE TOWN WHERE WIFI IS ILLEGAL
(AND THE PEOPLE WHO CHOOSE TO LIVE THERE)
The powerful telescopes in Green Bank, West Virginia, are responsible for some of the most important discoveries ever – and they require complete electromagnetic silence.
The town of Green Bank, West Virginia, is home to a super powerful telescope that needs electromagnetic silence to do its important research. But is that even possible anymore?
IT’S THE FIRST OF OCTOBER
and Route 92 into town is lined with trees dressed with greens, oranges, and yellows. Autumn is refreshingly crisp and colourful here in Green Bank, West Virginia. The road winds and curves past a convenience store, a school, a library, and a post office. There are no shopping plazas, fast-food restaurants, office buildings, or apartment complexes here. There’s also no cell service.
What is here, though, is one of the world’s most important facilities for the understanding of our universe.
Right off of the road and nestled in a valley naturally protected by the Allegheny Mountains is the Green Bank Observatory (GBO). It opened in 1958 as the United States’s first national radio astronomy observatory and remains a crucial facility. It houses a number of active telescopes, including the world’s largest steerable radio telescope, the Robert C Byrd Green Bank Telescope, or GBT.
Over the last six-plus decades, the discoveries made at Green Bank have come to define astronomy. Its telescopes have found black holes, pulsars, radiation belts, and gravitational waves. In September 2019, researchers at the GBO uncovered the most massive neutron star ever detected.
Green Bank is also where serious search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) research was born. In 1960, Frank Drake started Project Ozma here, the first US government-funded attempt to listen for extraterrestrial intelligence. It’s also where he wrote his famed equation about the possibility of worlds other than ours. And SETI work is still ongoing at Green Bank. Last year, one million
gigabytes of SETI data collected over the previous three years was released to the public, making it the largest trove ever of its kind.
All of this has been accomplished by listening to the sky above this beautiful, rural town.
But to do this crucial work, compromises have to be made. ‘The signals we detect from space are extremely faint,’ says Harshal Gupta, who’s the National Science Foundation programme officer for the Green Bank Observatory. ‘A source of close-by, man-made radio frequency can completely overwhelm [them].’ Meaning, radio-frequency interference (RFI) could severely corrupt that important research.
In order to limit RFI, the West Virginia legislature put a strict law on the books. The state’s Radio Astronomy Zoning Act of 1956 says it’s ‘illegal to operate or cause to be operated any electrical equipment within a 3.2 km radius of … any radio astronomy facility’. Similar restrictions also apply up to around 16 km from the facility.
Furthermore, the Federal Communications Commission in 1958 established the National Radio Quiet Zone (NRQZ), covering approximately 33 600 km2 across parts of both Virginia and West Virginia. In the mid 20th century, this meant no radio towers, TV antennas, or heavy machinery could be installed unless the installations met restrictive guidelines set forth by the FCC (such as highly directional antennas and reduced power). The NRQZ rules also prohibited citizens from operating their own radio equipment, such as ham radios, within the zone.
Sixty-two years later, both the NRQZ and the Radio Astronomy Zoning Act are still in effect. But we no longer live in the 1950s.
2020 is filled with cell phones, WiFi, electronic tyrepressure systems, smart refrigerators, video doorbells, Bluetooth headphones, and app-powered Nikes. Our modern world is nearly always connected by wireless internet, 4G (and, soon, 5G), and Bluetooth capabilities.
It’s all RFI, all the time.
Yet, in Green Bank, all of these modern conveniences are illegal in the name of science and discovery. But is it even possible to keep technological evolution out?
IN THE BEGINNING…
In 1932, using an antenna resembling the Wright Flyer, Bell Labs engineer Karl Jansky figured out what was causing the static that had been interfering with radio voice transmissions. The problem was cosmic radio waves coming from the centre of the Milky Way galaxy.
Five years later, ham radio operator Grote Reber built a radio telescope in his suburban Chicago backyard. Made of sheet metal, the 9.5 m-diameter parabolic dish and radio receiver amplified the cosmic radio waves by a factor of several million so that they could be recorded and charted. Reber spent his nights listening to the skies because daytime was too noisy, due to interference caused by electrically sparking automobile engines passing by.
In 1938, Reber confirmed Jansky’s initial discovery using a receiver designed to hear at the longer frequency of 160 MHz (1.9-m wavelength) and, a few years later, published his findings in an article titled ‘Cosmic Static’. The field of radio astronomy was born.
While advances made in radio and radar technology during World War II sparked growth in the field, by the 1950s, the US was falling behind other countries in building radio telescopes. Then, the ‘Plan for a Radio Astronomy Observatory’ was released by the National Science Foundation in August 1956.
The comprehensive document made the case that the study of astronomy is essential to the evolution of civilization and America’s scientific leadership in the world, and has helped ‘dispel man’s dependence on magic and superstition’. It even stoked Cold War fears by noting the Soviet Union’s own advancement in the field. The need for more and better facilities in the US, so said the plan, was imperative.
It also covered the location requirements for the US’s first national astronomy observatory. It had to be where land was amply available to ensure future expansion. It had to be in a rural area free from human-made radio waves. It needed constant weather conditions and firm soil for stabilising large radio telescopes. Relatively close proximity to Washington, DC, was also desired. A week before Thanksgiving 1956, it was announced that the NRAO was to be built in a remote West Virginia outpost nestled in the Allegheny Mountains, about 340 km from the nation’s capital. That town was called Green Bank.
WELCOME TO GREEN BANK
Betty Mullenax remembers a time before the observatory. It was all farmland back then, she says while ringing up a customer at Trent’s General Store. Located less than a mile from the observatory, Trent’s is a small shop selling meat and hardware supplies where Betty has worked for as long as she can remember. ‘It’s quiet here and I like it just the way it is,’ says Mullenax.
Prior to the observatory, the town and the surrounding areas were already sparsely populated.
In the mid 20th century, the logging industry in West Virginia was dying, which created a minor exodus. In
1958, there were no towns of more than 4 000 people within 80 km of Green Bank and only about 125 buildings total in the surrounding 30 km2 valley. This made it the perfect location for an observatory in need of quiet.
Nearly everyone in town has a family member or knows someone who has worked at the observatory.
The facility is appreciated because it has brought jobs and an economy to Green Bank. And Mullenax hopes it’s here forever. ‘It helps a lot. A lot.’
But it also has kept Green Bank in a time capsule. According to the Pew Research Center, 96 per cent of American adults own cell phones and 81 per cent own smartphones. A 2018 study says that more than three quarters of North American households have WiFi.
Green Bank is the extreme outlier. But that’s changing. Mullenax says she’s noticed it’s become a little less quiet here. Younger generations now all seemingly have beeping gadgets. Visitors from out of town are upset their phones won’t work. People ask her about WiFi at the store. Trent’s does have internet (for ordering and for their credit card machines), but it’s ethernet. It comes from a cable tethered to the wall.
Green Bank is part of the larger Pocahontas County, which itself has a population of only about 8 500. Jeffrey P Barlow is the county’s sheriff and, since 1994, he has been in law enforcement. He says policing in Green Bank is difficult due to lack of communications. There’s no cell
service, only limited radio use, and the online systems for background checks in the patrol cars don’t work.
But Barlow, too, has noticed an increase in connectivity in the town recently. ‘Before, we had to knock on someone’s door if we wanted to call out,’ says Barlow. ‘Now, we can just connect to someone’s WiFi [in town].’ While he likes the old-fashioned ways, Barlow admits many things are now reliant on wireless communications. ‘Without this tech, it’s hard to get anything done. I mean, everything is on the computer these days.’
THE GBT
The Green Bank Telescope, which was completed in 2000, looks like an extreme erector set with its criss-crossing bars and geometric shapes. It’s 148 m tall, including the receiver, and its parabolic dish is large enough to fit two football fields. Each dish panel is roughly the size of a full mattress. The GBT is so large, with so many parts, that it takes 10 years of constant work to repaint the whole structure. So, every summer, a different area is focused on and the task completed. Then, after a decade, it’s repeated all over again.
The operating range goes from 100 MHz all the way up to 116 GHz. And the whole thing moves – capable, in the morning, of observing Earth’s radio leakage radiation as reflected from the Moon in one part of the sky, before shifting, in the afternoon, to another direction, in an attempt to confirm three previously unknown pulsars. It’s also extremely powerful, so much so that, in theory, it can detect a single snowflake hitting the ground.
Petrol-powered cars aren’t allowed near the active telescopes due to spark plugs giving off their own faint radio interference, so all vehicular traffic at the observatory is done in modified diesel automobiles. Diesel vehicles don’t have any spark plugs.
‘The GBT is the most sensitive telescope in the world’ in its frequency range, says Dr Karen O’Neil, Green Bank’s site director. ‘We use it to answer some of the most fundamental questions, such as how stars and planets form and how life actually got created. If we ever lose the GBT, we will lose the ability to dig deep into the universe.’
THE MARCH OF TECH PROGRESS
Chuck Niday is an electronics technician at Green
Bank Observatory, but he describes his job as ‘a guy who goes out to look for interference’. This means Niday hops in his truck (diesel, of course) and rides around town once a week, looking for anything causing RFI, such as WiFi or Bluetooth. Using a radio directionfinding array and general coverage receiver, he’s able to suss out signals anywhere from 100 kHz to 3.3 GHz. For WiFi, he uses a dongle, laptop, and a spectrum analyser to crack connections. ‘It’s basically an RFI listening post,’ says Niday, ‘And there’s plenty out there. Over 100 hotspots.’
In order to detect extraterrestrial civilisations, the GBT must be highly, highly sensitive. This also makes it susceptible to interference. In fact, some astronomical phenomena emit at the same frequency as common RFI. For example, pulsars emit at 2.4 GHz. Go ahead and check your current WiFi connection: It’s likely also 2.4 GHz. This overlap can bury astronomical signals and essentially whitewash the research.
‘WE GET INTERFERENCE ALL THE TIME. YOU CAN LITERALLY SEE IT IN THE DATA THAT IS COLLECTED. IT DOES MAKE OUR WORK HARDER.’
‘We get interference all the time. You can literally see it in the data that is collected,’ says Jill Malusky, GBO’s public relations specialist. ‘It does make our work harder.’ Nonetheless, GBO officials understand it’s incredibly hard in this day and age to limit RFI, considering how many household items and modern-day amenities emit it. ‘RFI exists in many things we take for granted today,’ says Malusky. ‘Many people have their entire homes set up today with these wireless and Bluetooth technologies. It is part of the world we live in and enjoy.’
Niday says some hotspots are unintentional, appliances or gear that have pre-installed functions that the offender didn’t realise would cause RFI.
‘I saw one that had this funny SSID, one that I had never seen before,’ Niday explains. (An SSID is the name of a wireless network.) ‘So, I looked it up. It was a dehumidifier that you could remotely control with an app on your cell phone.’ The headaches don’t stop there. ‘Refrigerators, baby monitors, printers,’ Niday rattles off other appliances with pre-installed RFI creators he’s encountered. ‘God, there’s so many HP printers around here.’
O’Neil has seen this first-hand as well. She shares what happened when the observatory went to go buy new tour buses. ‘We couldn’t buy a bus without it being WiFi-enabled, so we had to figure out a way to turn it off. We had to get into the electronics and pull the thing apart,’ says O’Neil.
Some of the hotspots, though, says Niday, are purposeful – people ignoring the Radio Astronomy Zoning Act and installing WiFi in their homes. But there isn’t much he can do about those. ‘We just make a note of it and go on,’ says Niday. ‘We don’t have that type of authority.’
He’s right. Enforcement of the state law, which was enacted in 1956, actually lies with the county. It provides
that violators are subject to a $50 fine, plus an additional $50 fine for each day the interfering electrical equipment is operated after a written notice.
Eugene Simmons is Pocahontas County’s prosecuting attorney and has been working in the office for nearly 20 years. He says that, yes, as written, it is the county’s responsibility to enforce that state law. But no one has ever asked him to send a written notice, nor subject anyone to a fine.
‘It’s never come up, to my knowledge,’ says Simmons. He chuckles at the thought. ‘I can just imagine going to an old lady’s house who’s making biscuits in the morning and saying, “Sorry, we have to turn off your electricity.”’
The GBO confirms this, saying they’d rather not go to Simmons. ‘If it’s nearby, in our small community, we just have a conversation with the person,’ says Malusky. ‘Our priority is to work together and find a solution.’
THE WORKAROUNDS
Since progress cannot be stopped, the observatory is exploring innovative workarounds. While they’re doing their best to educate the public, they’re also proceeding on technical solutions. The observatory hopes to develop what they call ‘RFI excision techniques’, which would remove the interference in real time before the data is even recorded. And in many cases, individual astronomers are able to use software systems that separate humanmade signals from cosmic data after collection.
The observatory is also looking into early involvement with the reinvention of WiFi.
Carla Beaudet is the observatory’s radio-frequency test and measurement engineer. Her main job is to figure out what equipment can be used at the observatory and find workarounds for RFI-emitting equipment. This often means constructing Faraday cages, enclosures that restrict
RFI emissions. Beaudet has experimented with LiFi, which is a wireless communication technology that uses infrared and visible light. ‘It’s in the terahertz range,’ she says. ‘It’s electromagnetic radiation, but at a much higher frequency and much easier to contain.’
Around the apparatus is Beaudet’s self-made Faraday cage, constructed from sheet metal, glass, and fine mesh. She says bandwidth-wise it works just as well as WiFi, but reach is where it falls short – the range is only around 5 m. The observatory is currently experimenting with this new tech in conference rooms, but six devices are needed to give every seat access. This makes LiFi fairly expensive. Beaudet says the nearby school also has expressed interest in this new tech. ‘They want a grant for it … but they would need a lot of them.’
While workarounds for this unique challenge are still being figured out,
Green Bank remains far quieter than many areas. Both O’Neil and Niday say visiting astronomers love working here because interference is still limited. The bad news is it might not stay that way for much longer.
‘It’s just everything now,’ says Niday,
‘And it’s not going to get any better.’
WIFI EVERYWHERE
It’s dismissal time at Green Bank Elementary-Middle School. Kids rush out to the waiting buses as the school administration watches. Julie Shiflet became principal of this 242-student school last summer and loves it already.
‘The students here are great,’ she says. Of course, they’re a bit different than other county schools in that they rely more on traditional textbooks as opposed to online resources. They do have the internet, though, hardwired into the computers in the school’s two labs and library.
However, it’s no secret to her or the school’s music teacher, Greg Morgan, that many of the students have WiFi, Bluetooth, and other RFI-emitting electronics at home. ‘I asked 22 eighth graders, “How many of you have [WiFi and Bluetooth] electronics?” All of them raised their hands,’ says Morgan. ‘Then, I asked how many of them have music and headphones for their devices. All but one raised their hands.’ Shiflet laughs at this. ‘And that’s probably because they lost them.’
Down the road from the school, about 2.5 km from the observatory, there’s a convenience store. The rumour is that it has WiFi. When one walks in to grab a soda, a WiFi connection indeed pops up. The clerk at the checkout says the store’s owner installed WiFi because a lot of folks in town have it anyway and no one yet has asked them to turn it off.
When told that the signal could interfere with the important scientific research being done down at the road at the Green Bank Observatory, such as looking for gravitational waves, detecting massive neutron stars, and even listening for extraterrestrial intelligence, she shrugs.
‘Yeah, but everyone’s got WiFi now.’