The Town Where Wi-Fi Is Banned: The Green Bank Telescope and the Quiet Zone
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- Опубликовано: 10 фев 2025
- Tucked away in a valley in the Allegheny Mountains in West Virginia, is this: the Green Bank Radio Telescope, the largest steerable radio telescope in the world. And there are some rather special rules for the area around it...
Thanks to Justin Richmond-Decker and Mike Holstine at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank for inviting me over and letting us film at the Telescope on one of their maintenance days! For more about the Green Bank Observatory: science.nrao.e...
Want a tour? You can! (Although you won't be allowed up the telescope!) greenbankobser...
On camera, thanks to MATT GRAY: / unnamedculprit - / unnamedculprit - mattg.co.uk
And thanks to DAN W: / iamdanw
And edited by Michelle Martin: / mrsmmartin !
I'm at tomscott.com
on Twitter at / tomscott
on Facebook at / tomscott
and on Instagram and Snapchat as @tomscottgo
And no, before anyone asks, I absolutely was not allowed onto the dish itself. Nearly got sunburn from it, though, it reflects a lot of light...!
Did you have suncreen on?
yup, factor 50, cos hes british and such
i love the reason "because i nearly got sunburn" not anything else, that - how terribly british you are tom! xD hahaha
glad to see a new video from you tom. im decent at english but yet i didnt understand why they have this telescope. i know sound travels in waves (so the conflict with wifi signals is obvious to me)
but why a telescope. listen to extra terrestial life or what?
if thats the case they better built in nevada or any other desert
your microphone has a wireless transmitter right? What about that?
Alternate title: "The Green Bank Telescope and the 'Shut Up, I'm Listening For Aliens' Zone"
that radio telescope looks like it's in need of some anti-aliasing.
Several times during editing, I wondered why my footage was pixellated.
SandyStarchild Exactly what I thought.
took me a bit to realize it wasn't shitty youtube compression
I thought it was censored XD
Any idea why it's built that way? Is it just cheaper?
A software engineer meeting up with friends? Ha! Good one.
(Angry Face)
@@echineziplays676 denial
@@jmh1189 ...is a river in Egypt
@@Blitterbug lemon party
tehgreatdoge I love it
Wow, great video Tom! That software engineer you interviewed at 2:23 seems like a pretty awesome guy. I wish I had a job like that.
Sure does.
hey there! did you need to skip town to just watch this video?
How did you watch this video ? IT'S FORBIDDEN !!! YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE A PHONE
That's you.
Noooo.... no!
Why is the snowy hill behind Tom so badly pixelated?
Glitch in The Matrix.
It's part of the telescope.
he made a video about that has to do with how videos are compressed.
Flyingvoxel nolond I hope youre joking
He's using MS-DOS compression from 1993
Do police use soup cans and string to communicate with each other?
No, crime is illegal there, so they don't need the police.
This is a town of only about 140 people. Crime is probably almost non existent.
The County Sheriff is probably in charge of any law enforcement that is needed.
Makes sense.
What if the county sheriff comits a crime?
Yes, they use wired comms indeed. Not sure about soup tins though, they may have upgraded to dogfood tins.
"Previously, on the Adventure Zone..."
scrolled down til i found an adventure zone comment
@@magic2174 an accidental crossover of two of my favorite things of content
DUCK! PIZZA!
Scrolled down looking for this, thanks.
*Amnesty theme intensifies*
I love how they gave you a Red helmet.
It's actually ridiculous, the amount of reliably good content this channel puts out on a weekly basis. Great work, Tom!
I actually find myself in this area quite frequently. There's a very popular ski resort named Snowshoe about 10 miles away from this observatory that I visit numerous times every winter. It's quite challenging dealing with meetups, like trying to find friends after you've split up on the slopes. Like the programmer said in this video, it's all about planning to meet at certain locations at certain times.
JOBoarder27 snowshoe has decent cell signal these days
Chase Marshall as long as your on top of the mountain, you can get service from a tower in the next county over
Just wait until the new Timberline opens, it’s going to be amazing!
I had the exact same experience going there several years back. I wanted to meet up with my grandparents and they got very lost multiple times, so did we. We heard that they were trying to improve the signal there.
Well, that's the way we all did things before cell phones when we had phones on the wall and message machines. It really wasn't that long ago
"My name is Ryan Lynch, and I'm a science."
Country road, please don't take me home. There's no wifi there.
West Virginia
Dammit! You took my idea!
There is internet. You don't need Wi-Fi to use the internet, just use a computer connected to a router with an Ethernet cable.
Probably healthier.
I'm guessing there's also no AM, FM, XM or even Short Wave radio, and no TV that's not cable, right??
can't believe they made TAZ Amnesty into a real thing
I was looking for someone commenting TAZ here!
T N DUCK NEWTON!
Was here to make a comment on taz
Chocolate Crow Its a nickname
Can't believe you came out to WV, wish I could have met up with you. One of the more interesting bits left out of the video was how they deal with winter conditions. They move the dish into a near-vertical "Snowplow mode" so that all the snow and ice will slide off, rather than have someone climb up and shovel 2 acres of sloped surface.
They are most likely trying to avoid damaging it.
+Sigma 476 Most Useful RUclips Comment of the Day.
+Odothuigon Hehe, caught you typing out that name. Don't worry, I do it too.
Linked reply never works for me. Not worth searching for the answer to yet another RUclips glitch.
The "linked replay" is just a google+ thing now.
Now we have to use @user, like in the old days.
“There are cities in the quiet zone” If memory serves, there’s a town called Kepler quite nearby...
glad someone else made a TAZ amnesty comment.
A nice little town. Bit of a monster problem now and then but it has a lovely hotel.
Yes!! Glad I’m not the only Amnesty fan!
Imagine if someone snitched on you for having a microwave 😭😂
they find out pretty quickly
There is no need to snitch, they have detectors (that's the point even).
"Open up! We suspect you are sheltering an illicit magnetron!"
"A 'Megatron'? No officer there's no Megatron here." >- Confused civilian
OPEN UP!! SURRENDER YOUR MICROWAVE!! WE HAVE THE HOUSE SURROUNDED!
i used to live in the panhandle of wv and my brother was able to go there for 2 weeks learning all about the satellite and other astronomy stuff. he says it was one of the coolest things he ever did. When i went with my family to pick him up, we got a tour of the facility and it definitely was one of the greatest things i have ever seen. and that was 6 years ago.
I did that in 2019! Best two weeks of my life
"The wireless genie is out of the bottle" - that's actually quite the neat quote...
I pass by this telescope on the way to snowshoe to go skiing every winter. It is always a head turner and very fascinating. Thanks for shedding some light on these “no signals” rumors I’ve always heard about that place.
Spark plugs cause RF interference. This is something I actually didn't know.
Yeah, it's pretty neat. Spark plugs use powerful bursts of arcing electricity to ignite the fuel, casting off EM pulses. Diesel engine fuel ignition is simply from compression heating the air-fuel mixture. When the diesel engine is cold, glow plugs are used, which are just heating elements that get the fuel up to a temperature where the compression will be enough to cause combustion.
That makes me wonder about the possible kinds of interference from vehicles.
Would an electric car be better or worse than the spark plugs in a petrol vehicle?
I mean, clearly the diesel vehicles still contain electronics...
Intuitively though you would think the electric vehicle would be even worse than the petrol one...
But perhaps not...
It compress's the air, then right before TDC fuel is sprayed in...Compressing the air makes it hot so when fuel is sprayed in it causes combustion...Just to be clear...
i'm more interested in knowing if electric cars are allowed? I'd imagine not because of the motors which would cause interferance. I guess one place where having an electric car is more harmful for the enviroment? :D
Electric car would be better than spark plugs because the spark plugs generate high voltage arcing. An electric car still have high switching noise though from IGBT driving the electric motors, and I assume that all motors in electric cars are brushless, otherwise they will also generate high amount of arcing. It also depends what other kind of technology electric cars have, since they're primarily electric, there is a lot of systems in it that may cause interference, whilst a diesel car doesn't necessarily need much electronics/computers to run.
And in a field like this radio tower is at, I'm sure they only allow certain types of diesel cars that has been measured of interference as well.
I've been there, with SARA (Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers) once. Quite a place. Fun fact: the reason the GBT has block edges is that each intersection is attached to a linear actuator, this allows the scope to distort itself into different patterns. There is a lounge outside of the no-spark region, and a checker cab as well as a volvo used going inside the sparkless zone.
I've been there! It was super cool. I was part of a college team using one of the smaller telescopes to measure the curve of the galaxy's disk. It was so quiet... And at night, you can actually see the Milky Way in the sky, along with so many stars you'd never see anywhere near a city! It's also super cool going into their computer rooms -- they have basically a Faraday cage airlock, where you have to go in one big shielded door, lock it, and then open the other door to get into the room, and reverse of that to get out. Without your phone, you just gotta go to a computer if you want to contact anyone!
I got to visit this place as a field trip with the scholars program at U Maryland! It is amazing and MASSIVE. No photos can do it justice. We were lucky enough to get to sleep over and actually use their smaller radio telescopes to look for hydrogen in the milky way! Super cool, and the people there were very friendly and informative. A lot of people also had bikes to ride around the base in so as to reduce interference.
It is really nice to see a video about the Observatory that gives correct information! Good job! Glad you enjoyed your visit here.
I heard about this due to The adventure Zone Podcast, the setting is a town inside the quiet zone and the telescope features prominently in the story. Note: The adventure Zone has two primary stories, one is The Adventure Zone: Balance or TAZ:Balance and the other is TAZ: Amnesty. Both feature the people playing either DnD or in TAZ amnesty's case, monster of the week, both of which are pen and paper RPG's.
I noticed many of you were wearing lapel mics. Normally, this would be just be connected to a transmitter pack, and transmitted to a receiver over RF. How do these not cause issues for the dish?
They're connected to a recorder in each person's pocket! (We also filmed on a maintenance day - while smaller telescopes may have been operating, the big dish was being checked over. If it was listening, we wouldn't have been allowed within a mile with our cameras!)
That answers my question. I was trying to figure out how you were allowed to have a camera if spark plugs are banned. Are glow plugs banned also?
Glowplugs are just resistive heaters so they don't produce much noise if any at all.
As an aside, I visited the GBT a few years ago, nice place with a cool visitor center.
Do you have any issues keeping the clocks in sync with independant free-running clocks in recorders and cameras, or are you typically filming in short enough segments that it doesn't really matter?
Back-of-the-envelope maths here, hopefully someone in the industry can weigh in with actual experience.
Crystal oscillators can pretty easily be made accurate to 10ppm - if you assume 2 frames error in audio sync at 30fps before it starts getting noticeable, that works out to about 1 hour before you have to worry about clock drift, in the worst case (1 running 10ppm fast, another 10ppm slow). Less than I was expecting - I was expecting a day or two would be fine before needing a resync.
love from Huntington, West Virginia..LOVE YOUR SHOW!!
0:31 looks like the engineers blueprints were extremely low res when they built it
This is one of the cooler subjects for these videos.
Glad you make these Tom, keep them coming.
I love that they didn’t just tell the doghouse guy that he has to get a new one. they actually bought him one instead
Shows like yours and Atlas Obscura are quickly becoming my favorite channels if not just for how composed and informative they are. With great production quality as well it's like watching the Discovery Channel back when it actually inspired interest in things like this.
Something even more interesting is a town nearby here that is called Cass. It is owned by the state and has a steam powered railway that you can ride to the 2nd highest point in West Virginia and you can see the Green Bank Radio Telescope from it. Yes, I visited both places.
Jaw Tooth For some reason I didn't expect to see you here! Long time subscriber. I live near the Cardinal line in South Charleston, WV to put it in railroad terms. My nearest station is Charleston.
“Hello Earth Scientist! I need to borrow your corporeal hands for a minute!”
Looking for a comment like this!
The greatest line in the entire series
stan minerva
perfect quote
@@geckobrain stan Minerva!!
Heh. They can't watch this vid.
Yes they can! Just only on desktop computers, inside the observatory buildings... :)
Agh. Intermixed feeling of being awesome that the great Tom Scott noticed me or annoyance that it was just to tell me I'm wrong
Wired connections, I assume, are still allowed
Well, you know when someone tells you you're wrong you get smarter and have a chance to learn from your mistake. :D
They have the internet, just not WiFi.
I've been there! (And yes, up the telescope, too!). Tom, did you know a few miles from the NRAO / GBT, the National Youth Science Camp program has been held every summer since 1963? I'm a big fan of your talks, I think you should check it out and consider giving a talk or directed study there!
Their new campus in Davis is amazing, it used to be owned by Canaan Valley Institute but was bought by NYSF and put to use by them. It is almost completely self sufficient in their water system, when you flush the toilets the water goes through a greenhouse full of tropical plants that filter the water until it can be used to flush again!
I got to visit Green Bank during my time at NYSC!
The structure of the dish is playing tricks with me. It makes the shadows look pixalated. Like you are in front of a giant green screen and just added in some older video game in the background.
Coolest thing I've seen or heard of in at least the last 2 decades. Thank you Mr.Scott for your "Amazing places" series. 💛
I did a science summer camp there when I was in high school! I remember that any rooms inside the main building that had computers in them also had a vault door (seen at 3:18) and copper wire mesh over the windows, along with copper flashing visible wherever there's a break between the wall and ceiling. One of my weirdest memories from there was an old barn in the middle of a field (seen at 2:04) with a sign that says "RYEDUPLAGUEROUND" above the door.
Damn! I am a huge fan, Tom. I wish I had known you were coming to Green Bank! I am normally in Guatemala, but my house in the US is about 400 from the NRAO Green Bank main entrance. And I have always found it hilarious to watch visitors twitch when they have smart phone withdrawal. Wish I could have met you.
Dear Ryan Lynch,
How do I become a member of Science?
Another great concise video Tom! Love them!
Hardest part of taking calls from West Virginia, explaining to people why they can't get Wi-Fi where they are at, if they are near that telescope.
Those that live in northern Pocahontas and Southern Randolph Counties are well aware of no wifi, cellphones, ect...
So I'm surprised, because it's been a No Zone for years!
there's something about Tom Scott that just works, love you buddy, keep doing what you do
shout-out to the adventure zone amnesty!
subscribed because you actually have proper captioning that enable I to enjoy your video, thank you.
The part about diesel only is pretty awesome; great stuff.
This is so cool! That's another place in the list of places I want to work then....
I loved the quality of your video Tom! I especially liked that you talked to a woman there; it hadn't occurred to me how important representation is before, but it was kind of reassuring to see her, since I want to go into that field when I leave college.
0:14 Me: Wow, that mountain is really pixelated...
Thanks to Tom and his crew for all these informative videos.
I was honestly expecting a drone shot there 😅
"This is where I would have used a big sweeping drone shot to get the dramatic picture, but remote control isn't allowed here." @ 0:37
ConditionOfMan I know, it was exactly before he said that I expected it, that's why it was funny ;)
He could have used a telescoping pole and a Go-Pro, and maybe some tape.
@@ConditionOfMan use gps.
In WV for another story and another testament to Senator Byrd's ability to bring huge money into the state. ;-) Green Bank and NRAO are very cool. I hope you got a chance to visit the shop where they build the receivers for the dishes. Way cool machine shop work.
If they are outfitted like FCC trucks they can use the Doppler effect to get the bearing of a signal just by driving. What used to take three trucks can now be done with one. Handheld direction finders switch a scanner between a pair of antennas a couple of hundred times a second. If the antennas are not both pointed directly at the source you hear the switching as a tone. You just rotate your hand until the tone disappears and that's your direction.
I am lucky enough to have seen this thing in person, it truly is completely marvelous how big this thing is. Granted that was back in about 2007 or so when IoT wasn't a thing, and I'm not sure I even had a cell phone. We visited the museum there and went around to the various telescopes in a tour bus, we got within maybe 200 yards of the big one but even from there it completely towered over anything in the surroundings.
Duck Newton sends his regards.
This is what I came here for
duuuuckkkkk newtonnnnnnnnnn.....
Don’t you mean
WAAAAAYYYYYNNNNNEEEEE Newton
Big brother isn’t watching you. Big brother is listening
When I saw the thumbnail with all the white behind you I thought this was another video from your Arctic trip!
Great video Tom. I've not seen anyone cover this spot as deeply as you have. Usually they talk about the weirdos that live there
Like the weirdos at Amnesty lodge in the nearby town of Kelpler? Don't get me wrong, they are nice people. Just a little weird.
The thing about the diesel cars being the only ones allowed is interesting... I wonder if electro-cars have a bigger/lower impact than the gasoline spark plugs... (probably more:/).
the fact that signal searcher guy bought the dog a new heating pad instead of giving the owner a ticket or something makes me very happy
I believe that an interstate highway, which I believe I was on once going to Virginia Tech for a visit, passes through the Quiet Zone. Cell phones work, but cell reception is very weak. Blacksburg is located just outside the zone, but gets 3G instead of LTE.
Wow, I just subscribed and started watching your videos and you're already making a visit to my home state haha
I lived near a bunch of tv and radio towers near friendship heights in Washington dc and I could unplug my telephone, lift the receiver and hear random radio stations faintly on the ear piece via induction.
Yes. Before fiber optic technology, AM radio interference was a BIG problem on landline telephones.
Edit: I reread, and see you say you unplugged the phone. In that case, it would be TV or FM frequencies. Not AM.
One of my science classes took a trip there for 3 days. It was wild. We got to use some of the smaller telescopes there at night. We had shifts and were monitoring for certain things, I forget what exactly.
It was one of the coolest places I've been. I think it was actually 2 years and a week before this video was posted roughly but I may be remembering that wrong.
Fun fact, at the time that we visited (idk if this is still the case), that telescope there was the biggest mobile object made. It has little wheels and can be moved around on them.
So cooooooooooooooool
And the timelapse at the end was beautiful, was that matts idea or yours? :p
I just realized that you have the best channel on RUclips.
Some people are actually moving into the quiet zone because of desire to be away from the radio interference.
From the area, there are a few people who believe the radio signals cause cancer, among other things.
Tom says it in the video, at about 04:10 ;-)
Could be true, but then again the universe and our sun causes a lot of radio-magnetic signals too... and thats quiet a lot more powerful...
you're right to be suspicious. Electromagnetic hypersensitivity has been proven time and again to be an imagined illness. But telling sufferers that there is an area with no radiation makes them feel better, so why not?
That's like the definition of the placebo effect.
Well done. I visited the observatory a few years ago.
Why is the quiet zone a square? Isn't that like, not how radio signals work? If they don't want any interference above a certain "volume", then it should be a circle, all points within a certain radius. Radio waves don't care about which ways is north or west.
A rectangle is a whole lot easier to work with on maps that use latitude and longitude. You could tell people that use of such and such is banned in latitudes ranging from X-Y, and longitudes ranging from Z-A. Try doing that with a circle.
I think the silent zone is a circle but it’s just easier to enforce a rectangular quiet zone
Just making a square that engulfs the entire area of the would-be circle is fine.
@Sassy The Sasquatch Oi- you're right.
The paradise for Chuck
4:21 that's not a scientist, that's Ed Chicane!
that's what I thought!!
The more I watch your videos, the more I realise what an awesome job you have. Thanks for sharing!
any guy wearing a tshirt that says 'moab brewery' without irony is my kinda guy
Greetings from Kepler West Virginia!
I do wonder if anyone has given a visible representation of what the world would like if you can see radio signals
Theres an app for IOS that does that
I lived about an hour away from here for 10 years, it’s a really cool place
Is it a no fly zone for conventional aircraft too?
Steve Gould I'd say probably because of the radar on the plans and the connections with the airports and because of the military base as well probably
No, actually, it's not. Aside from the 5-mile radius around each airport in the area, where you need to check in with the controllers as you pass through, there aren't any flight controls in the radio quiet zone. I checked a couple different maps, and none of them show any flight controls at all.
Maybe it's classified as a "temporary control" and it happens to not be active right now?
My guess is that radio traffic that planes use is very consistant, and is just part of the types of interference they have to deal with and filter out. (GPS broadcasting has been mentioned as well that would fall under this).
Planes have ads-b which transmits all the time, not just atc.
For gasoline aircraft? Yes, unless you're gliding with magnetos OFF.
For Diesel, turboprop, turboshaft, turbofan and turbojet aircraft? No, but you aren't allowed to restart a turbojet, turboprop, turbofan or turboshaft engine in the deep-quiet RQZ.
Finally! A video where I already knew about the subject you were talking about. ;-p
Every licensed American radio amateur knows about the National Radio Quiet Zone, but they might not know about what goes on there. Thanks for the info Tom!
K7IVO
Wow Tom, good video! Thanks as always x
The top of the Telescope needs some anti aliasing :p
Going here this year for a college trip! This is gonna be fun
TAZ: Amnesty gang please tell me one of you is here
Yee
what's that
@@elshabopants7506 It’s a real-play podcast by the McElroy family. The story eventually takes one of the main characters to the Green Bank Telescope
yup!
Here
I bet you would be breaking the law in the Silent Zone right now
4:09 Chuck McGill should've just moved here
I live in West Virginia. I really appreciate this video.
the time-lapse at the end, how long was that in real time?
It took a lot of searching (who knew stats on this would be hard to find). In normal conditions it takes 10 minutes to make a complete rotation (36deg/min). At seriously lower temperates (well below freezing), this may be reduced to half speed or stopped completely. See section 16.4.4 of here: science.nrao.edu/facilities/gbt/facilities/gbt/observing/GBTog.pdf
Fantastic video - was going to ask about your video camera and radio mics, but found in the comments you'd mentioned it was a maintenance day, and you had hardwired mics.
"We have to plan in advance." haha, like people did for hundreds of years. Cells are great, but they're not ESSENTIAL if you plan things. Good on him.
just cited this video in a research paper, very helpful!
People “allergic” to wifi are absolutely insane
At least they now have a place to stay, and are far away from normal people.
they're not insane. they have a relatively minor mental illness that causes them to have reactions when they believe they "should" have one.
@@sydssolanumsamsys Extremely minor, in comparison to a lot of people today. Half of society is off its rocker.
@@Autumn_DeeDum Lmao, you're one to talk about "normal people"
I go skiing here it’s great and a lot people on the east coast love to go there
So if you want a microwave, you'll need to turn your house into a faraday cage?
no, cause your not allowed a microwave..
S Dew you can use one if you get a permit to be caged. you have to be licensed and u can be liable for scientific interruption if done improperly.
Actually, I think a follow up vid showed that the microwaves that _are_ allowed literally do live inside heavily shielded boxes. So you're closer to the truth than you think.
In the cafeteria at the observatory they have a microwave inside a faraday box, so yes
Thanks for this video. It was really informative. I knew about the quiet Zone around green Banks, but I didn´t expect the local towns to have cell phones. I didn't knew that only diesel cars where allowed in a smaller Zone or dog house heaters to send out noise. I didn't even know that something like a dog house heater exists ;)
What about pacemakers?
All tourists and employees with pacemakers are given a temporary analog heart, which does not emit RFI. After leaving the premises, they are allowed to reinsert their original pacemaker heart.
I'd assume they're just not allowed on site.
Seriously though. They are allowed on site. There is no restriction for people with pacemakers. Like many things that we can't control, it's just an accepted source of RFI.
don't you need an operation to change pacemaker? if that was the case then it must be extremely annoying but i am probaly completely wrong
the guy was joking
when it's their business you're banned but when it comes to you they see you inside your house sitting on the toilet.
I'm surprised they let people film that close to it. I'd think it would pick up the RFI from your camera.
tom mentioned it somewhere above they were doing maintance on it so it wasnt listening.
Then why couldn't they do a drone shot while they were there?
Because that's against the law, not against policy.
GrandHunterMan Did he say that? Must've overheard it, my bad.
He couldn't do a drone shot, because apparently there are also smaller antennas that could pick it up.
Thanks for the lift, Duck Newton!
Charles McGill would feel at peace here.
For some reason, I imagine if I were to turn on my wifi in the area, I'd be hunted like a deer.