Fun fact, in order to comply with federal regulations, the ionosphere actually creates a square hole in itself directly above the radio quiet zone in order to not reflect shortwave radio down onto the region. Now this does also mean that every day the area is bathed in unimaginably intense ultraviolet radiation, so when visiting be sure to pack SPF 10,000 or higher.
Today's Park Bench comes from Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania! I'll put up more footage of the area and us playing on the water slides on my channel soon! --Matt
I love Ohiopyle, the whitewater rafting is phenomenal! I really enjoy the natural water slides too, I hope the rocks didn't get your swim trunks too badly.
Thanks for the honest reporting! You could have used GPS to find the observatory, just download the maps beforehand. Phones don't transmit while using GPS. Also, you're right that it's not a no-fly-zone. There's even a private NRAO airfield right next door. There is a Military Operations Area overhead, but that doesn't prevent anyone from flying through.
Maybe the radio/wifi/cell service turns off at night? There's rarely any radio observation during the day due to massive interference from a nearby star.
That is a surprisingly brilliant theory, I've never thought about it but if you are listening for EM signals you don't want to do it when the most powerful source in the local vicinity is the sun directly above your head.
This is certainly not true. They want you to turn off the radio sources because they create peaks in the spectrum. But the the frequency distribution of radio wave from technological sources (many short spikes) is very different from the radio wave spectrum from natural sources (comparatively smooth)
I live near train tracks and from time to time I'll hear the trains horn going off, I absolutely thought it was the train by me, not the one in the video.
Most trains in the US use diesel-electric locomotives. With rare exception they all use air horns. These horns are required by federal law to be 96~110 dB @ 100ft and are to be used at all public access rail-crossings. I hope this information was useful. -NSSD70MAC
So I just did some research (Wikipedia) and found out that this zone is about the size of my federal state North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) here in Germany... that is really huge!
I am sure people won't be surprised by my story. I was once at a huge kind-of "automobile festival." There were probably around 5000 people at any one time, coming and going all day long, a few thousand cars of all eras on exhibit, and some "automobile celebrities," making appearances on a stage. On the other side of a wide and busy 6 lane road from the event, there was a pretty good group of "automobile protesters," maybe 50, milling around, talking to one another, drinking coffee. They were waiting for the TV camera crew to get ready. When the cameraman was all set, the crew had the protesting group bunch up for a tight shot, hold up their signs, and chant. That was the total amount of protesting this group ever did. They weren't even trying to get noticed by the event attendees. The way I knew they were there is that an announcement at the event came over the PA that all protesters who wanted to be in the protest should now go to the area provided for them on the other side of the road. The announcer said that they had not been able to get the permission of any other businesses on the other side, except for one small area, so if you didn't want to be arrested for trespassing, only use the designated area. It was very thoughtful of the event organizers.
My understanding is that they are much more sensitive to what frequency's are being emitted. However, they are sensitive to the fact that they need to get along with their neighbors. I have heard stories where two people might show up unannounced at somebody's doorstep offering to fix their microwave oven, (when they did not know that it even had a problem.)
I love about 1 hour 47 minutes from this place, down in West Virginia. You should do more exploring in this fine state because it is wild and wonderful. And it is almost heaven. And the country roads will take you home.
I live in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC. I've vacationed in Green Bank - it's a charming quiet place for walking in the woods and stargazing. Ohiopyle is also lovely.
The story about the film crew barging through the crowded building to film an empty one made me think of the incomparable Damien Day. I still miss Drop the Dead Donkey.
I was at the beach once and had my Blackberry with me. News crew walking around the beach looking for people who had to bring their devices with them from work. I was like "Yeah, I have it, but I'm not chained to it," and they still wanted me to pull it out so they could get footage. Like, really, people.
You could actually hear the Doppler effect on the train horn. I hear train horns in the distance where I live but they're too far away to make out any pitch shift.
I've watched this video many times, and was listening to it again in the car today. That train horn blew right as I was crossing some train tracks, and it might have freaked me out a little.
I have an RF meter (it picks up anything from 200MHz to 8GHz and also demodulates it into audible sound), and the only place I've found so far where there was basically complete silence was Clumber Park (a National Trust place in Nottinghamshire). That was in the evening in winter though, when there was hardly anyone around. Interestingly though, I noticed that my phone didn't seem to bother even trying to transmit anything (with Bluetooth and WiFi off) when it couldn't hear any sign of any mobile networks at all.
there are a few radio silent zones in Australia which also have no-fly zones over them. They are HF Over the Horizon Radars.... well, the receiving sites are, not so much the transmitter sites. Those are just places that kangaroos avoid because they start getting cooked if they get too close.
Bollocks, eh? That raises interesting implications for those who claim to be electro-sensitive (as if we didn't already know their claims were already bollocks).
There have been MANY. They have all found electrosensitivity to be bollocks. "Most blinded conscious provocation studies have failed to show a correlation between exposure and symptoms, leading to the suggestion that psychological mechanisms play a role in causing or exacerbating EHS symptoms. In 2010 Rubin et al. published a follow-up to their 2005 review, bringing the totals to 46 double-blind experiments and 1175 individuals with self-diagnosed hypersensitivity." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_hypersensitivity#cite_note-pmid15784787-2
IIRC, there have been cases whereby people have reported negative experiences from a newly-built mobile telephone mast... ...for weeks before the thing was turned on!
Big fan of all of your videos. This is one of my favorites if for no other reason than you are in Ohiopyle State Park. I have spent a great deal of time there for more years than I care to mention. I was actual sitting on that same bench today which is what inspired me to watch the video again.
It USED to be really strict there and they really had FCC police that would strictly enforce things. But due to budget concerns, they had to cut back on enforcement, so now it's not the best situation anymore
Green Bank Observatory telescopes are no longer entirely funded through US NRAO/NSF since FY 2018. Consortium of commercial/educational/research grantors, overseen by WVU, assumed iboth ndependent operations/~$10M annual budget.. Single steerable telescope remains under NRO control within the Nat'l Radio Dark Zone (source: Nat'l Geo) Closest interstate access to GBO is I 64 @ White Sulfur Springs, ~60 miles S of NRDZ.
I visited the Salton Sea recently and while yes there are abandoned buildings and wrecks there are also so many people it was difficult to get photos. Taking a picture of the sea an old man on a bike rode up to tell us how the water is really low this year.
They don't mean there's literally no wifi (/s), they mean that, like in most of America, the internet is slow, is nearly unusable (said from someone who lived in WV for 2 months but hated it so much they moved half way cross the country!)
Fun fact. I have an old copy of the Joy of Cooking, which includes a recipe for bear. It even tells you how you need to prepare bear cub differently from adult bears. Not yum (I imagine).
I remember being surprised at the amount of RF stuff I discovered a few years ago,when I was researching...something. (I can't remember what,now. Perhaps LPFM,or WiFi related.) There's still plenty of wifi,and cell towers,and all sorts of stuff around there. Not very "radio quiet" at all.
As an American I find it appalling and unlistenable when other Americans do their terrible "British" accents, yet terribly endearing when Matt does his southern accent. Let him speak, Tom!
I live 9 miles from Jodrell Bank (a similar style telescope in England) and the only signs saying turn off your phones are when you enter the site, about 200m away, and at the visitor centre. But then they live broadcast Stargazing Live in BBC there every year while still using the telescope, so I don't think it makes too much difference to the research
Have you looked at the Astron LOFAR yet? That *does* have a radio quiet zone around Westerbork - as in, not petrol cars allowed. And yes, it's just across from the former concentration camp.
I corrected Tom's "west Virginia" mistake before matt did - half of my former in laws are from that tiny little town of ohiopyle, and half of my family is from another tiny little town just north of there (kecksburg).
I am quite curious as to what the buttons Matt got to press operated. I've had a read through this (science.nrao.edu/facilities/gbt/facilities/gbt/observing/GBTog.pdf) and it seems like most of the operation is computer controlled scripts, and not actually manual controls. Looking forward to the follow up on that.
Damn! I live 30mins from Ohiopyle I wish i would have known that Tom would have been going there. And there goes my only chance of ever meeting Tom Scott IRL :(
+Matt and Tom, mini typo in the description. "...hat kit do you use ..." or something like that but I can't check now that I'm writing this on mobile. Interesting video nonetheless.
Tom, you should totally come down to WVU, there's probably an interesting story here for you to talk about here, like the VW emissions scandal. Also hopefully you'll make some good ties to the university too, haha.
It isn't very well enforced even within the proper no-wifi, no reception, limited radio regions. There's a pizza place near Seneca Rocks with aswesome pizza and super fast wifi
It was never going to be strict because of green Bank, it would have been strict because of Sugar Grove, the naval spy satellite Observatory, which is the real reason for the national radio quiet Zone. But by the time Wi-Fi and everyone having cell phones and especially smartphones started being a thing, Sugar Grove wasn't really operating that much anymore. The reason that it didn't have to be strict before was the fact that the area is so sparsely populated. Pocahontas County is almost a thousand square miles, yet has a population of less than 9,000 people. And the reason that it's not strict now is that the green Bank Observatory isn't getting enough funding or government support, so why would the state go out of its way to enforce the quiet Zone if it won't even cough up the funds to keep the telescope going?