“The best part about being a radio-astronomer is being able
to work from nine to five. The large dish on the top of this building listens
to sounds from space twenty-four hours seven days a week.” Professor James Pike,
the facility’s chief astronomer, led the small group of high school seniors
into the control center for the Red Rock Large Array. “Although the large array
is currently committed to monitoring a spatial anomaly, we can focus the legacy
dish toward a local phenomenon and let you listen in on its activity.”
Eldon Speck tried not to yawn, but he was bored. He never
got any work done when the high school tour groups came through. The man
conducting the tour sat down at Eldon’s console. “The radio-telescope monitors
a wide range of frequencies listening for signals. Usually the source is a
pulsar. Sometimes we get reflected signals bounced back from nearby objects.”
He flipped a switch and a speaker sprang to life with static. He turned a knob,
slowly advancing the indicator needle along the scale. A sudden squeal followed
by the sound of a metronome flooded the room. “That sound you hear is from a
pulsar in the Crab Nebula.”
“What’s that other noise?” Eldon asked on cue after a
reasonable pause.
“Background static.” The astronomer leaned forward and
flipped a switch marked ‘Squelch’. Fortunately, we have a way of filtering that
out. The majority of the background noise disappeared. The rhythmic
“click...click...click” of the pulsar became clearer. Eldon could hear
something else; something that neither his boss nor the visiting high school
students heard. There was interference in the signal that wasn’t normal.
While Dr. Pike led the students into the main control center
for the large array, Eldon made a recording of the repeating pattern. His research
for his Master’s Thesis would have to wait while he pursued this little
mystery. After a few days of attempting to decode the signal, he called on a
friend.
No comments:
Post a Comment