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01/04/2016: Watch this space: Telescope releases mass of data
Astronomers in China working with one of world’s largest optical telescopes released a huge collection of data over the new year holiday, increasing the chances of “significant findings” in space exploration, experts say. The latest update to the National Astronomical Observatories’ sky survey, conducted using the LAMOST telescope, includes some 4.62 million spectral data relating…
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01/29/2016: This town lives without cellphones, Wi-Fi: Meet Green Bank, West Virginia
Imagine making plans with your friends — by walking to their house to talk in person. That’s the norm at Green Bank, West Virginia, where its 143 residents can’t rely on their cellphones or tablets to connect with friends and loved ones because all wireless devices are forbidden. Located within a 13,000-square mile area known…
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01/29/2016: Gigantic Gas Cloud Set to Collide with the Milky Way
An enormous celestial gas cloud that first left the Milky Way when dinosaurs roamed the Earth is speeding back towards the galaxy at roughly 700,000 miles per hour, a study in The Astrophysical Journal Letter Reports. The cloud – known as “The Smith Cloud” – was first ejected from the Galaxy some 70 million years…
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03/11/2016: Berthoud students discover space anomaly
Collin Miller describes the slate of speakers at the Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers Western Regional Conference in Arizona this weekend: “There’s doctor this, and doctor someone, PhDs, then you have Berthoud High School STEM students.” Miller and fellow high school senior, Xander Pickard, will present the research of a team of six Berthoud students,…
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03/23/2016: AT&T uses low-power antennas to prevent cellular interference with telescope
AT&T engineered an unusual low-power antenna system inside a radio quiet zone at a snow resort in rural West Virginia, giving thousands of daily smartphone users network access for the first time. Work on the multimillion-dollar solution started in 2013 and took months of testing with engineers at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and…
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03/25/2016: For Some, Einstein’s Space-Time Ripples Have Yet To Break Their Silence
When leaders of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, or LIGO, announced in February the first-ever direct detection of a gravitational wave, astrophysicists Scott Ransom from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and Andrea Lommen at Franklin and Marshall University in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, had mixed feelings. On the one hand, it meant that the team they and…
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6/5/2016: Green Bank Observatory sets sights on new generation of spuds
Better known for probing deep space to study the nature of gravitational waves, discover the presence of molecules that could potentially support life, and search for the presence of extraterrestrial intelligence, the Green Bank Observatory has added a more down-to-earth research role to its repertoire: potato production. On Thursday, the last of six five-acre plots…
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6/6/2016: Green Bank tour celebrates role in extraterrestrial intelligence search
The first scientific search for intelligent life in the universe began in 1960 at the Green Bank Observatory, in Pocahontas County, with a four-month effort to detect interstellar radio signals from two stars in a relatively nearby constellation. It continues today, as the observatory’s 300-foot Green Bank Telescope serves as a key component of Breakthrough…