http://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-rare-island-of-serenity-thanks-to-the-fcc/
<http://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-rare-island-of-serenity-thanks-to-the-fcc/>
For anyone who's ever been bothered by the loud ring of a
cellphone, or a loud-mouth on a cell phone . . . there's an island of
tranquility, if you will, in the West Virginia mountains.
Here, most gadgets that transmit aren't just unwelcome, they're BANNED by the
federal government.
People do live here - they're just hard to reach.
Linda Taylor lives in Green Bank. It's in the middle of a 13,000-square mile
swath of the state that in 1958 was declared by the FCC the National Radio
Quiet Zone.
No Bluetooth, no Blackberries. "Can't use cell phones, you can't use wireless,"
said Taylor.
No problem if you're from here. But Taylor has to adjust when she LEAVES the
Quiet Zone.
"It is weird because, like, if I'm out at a restaurant or something and at the
beach and my phone rings, I'm like, 'What is that?' And it's my phone," she
told Schlesinger. "So it is weird in certain aspects."
The Quiet Zone was set up to protect the National Radio Astronomy Observatory,
a very large and very sensitive radio telescope listening for the faintest of
signals from space.
"You want to be in a place where there's not interference, so it allows you to
hear much fainter signals," said Ethan Schreier, president of Associated
Universities, Inc., who oversees over the telescope. He said the telescope
helps us see the effects of general relativity by observing pulsars in orbit
around other stars or other pulsars.
But it can't do that if somebody's on their cell phone. "That's right," said
Schreier. "It would mess up the signals and make it much harder to study."
Best wishes,
Jonathan
For anyone who's ever been bothered by the loud ring of a cellphone, or a
loud-mouth on a cell phone . . . there's an island of tranquility, if you will,
in the West Virginia mountains.
Here, most gadgets that transmit aren't just unwelcome, they're BANNED by the
federal government.
People do live here - they're just hard to reach.
Linda Taylor lives in Green Bank. It's in the middle of a 13,000-square mile
swath of the state that in 1958 was declared by the FCC the National Radio
Quiet Zone.
No Bluetooth, no Blackberries. "Can't use cell phones, you can't use wireless,"
said Taylor.
No problem if you're from here. But Taylor has to adjust when she LEAVES the
Quiet Zone.
"It is weird because, like, if I'm out at a restaurant or something and at the
beach and my phone rings, I'm like, 'What is that?' And it's my phone," she
told Schlesinger. "So it is weird in certain aspects."
The Quiet Zone was set up to protect the National Radio Astronomy Observatory,
a very large and very sensitive radio telescope listening for the faintest of
signals from space.
"You want to be in a place where there's not interference, so it allows you to
hear much fainter signals," said Ethan Schreier, president of Associated
Universities, Inc., who oversees over the telescope. He said the telescope
helps us see the effects of general relativity by observing pulsars in orbit
around other stars or other pulsars.
But it can't do that if somebody's on their cell phone. "That's right," said
Schreier. "It would mess up the signals and make it much harder to study."
> On Nov 9, 2016, at 12:52 AM, Scott Granados <scott.grana...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Radio telescope, which one is this? I knew about the one at Harvard and the
> one at Stanford and of course the big dish in Puerto Rico but didn’t know
> about one in West Virginia. I’ve never heard of WiFi or other signals being
> banned near these, the one in Stanford sits right on top of a major peering
> facility I’m sure you’re familiar with.:)
>
>
>> On Nov 8, 2016, at 6:37 PM, Jonathan Cohn <jon.c.c...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I was not planning on replying but anyway. There is an area of West Virginia
>> where all radio transmissions (including WiFi( are illegal This is because
>> of the radio telescope in the area. Also, I heard recently from somebody
>> driving between Mississippi and Houston that significant portions of the
>> trip had no cellular connectivity.
>>
>> Take Care,
>>
>> Jonathan Cohn
>>
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