- Physics world.
- Hello and welcome to the Physics World Stories podcast.
I'm Andrew Gluster, and in this episode we're gonna be
exploring radio astronomy
and looking at the role of amateurs in its birth
and those who continue in the amateur pursuit.
Regular listeners to the podcast will know
that I have something of a love for radio astronomy.
So, when Dr. Emma Chapman explored the role
of the amateur in her feature for Physics World Magazine,
I was only too happy to make this the first Physics World
podcast of 2024, all about radio astronomy. I
- Am Dr. Emma Chapman.
I'm an astronomer, astrophysicist, uh,
lecturer at University of Nottingham, uh,
where I also lead the outreach for the department as well.
Um, very passionate about that
and it's also why I write popular science books. Cool.
- Like what? - Um, oh yes.
Well, if you're interested , um, yes.
My, um, the book
that sounds at the minute is called First Light Switching on
Stars at the Dawn of Time,
which is about my personal research area, which is, uh,
looking at the very first stars
and black holes to be born in our universe about, gosh, 13
and a half billion years ago.
Um, yes, and I'm in the final, final stages
of writing the second one at the minute
with a deadline in two weeks, . Okay. Can
- You tell us what that one's - About?
Yeah. That, well, that one is very relevant.
That one is about, um, the whole of radio astronomy.
It's a look at the history and present
and future of radio astronomy as a field.
Uh, so that, and that's actually one of the reasons
that I wanted to write this article was
'cause in, in researching that book, I just came across
so many little stories about the, so-called Amateur.
The field of radio astronomy was started
by amateur astronomers, um,
and very much driven by them, uh, in order
to get it off the field because the scientific establishment
just wasn't interested.
- , as we'll hear, one of the key players in the
birth of radio astronomy was Bernard Lovel
and the Lovel Telescope, along
with the Carl Sagan's contact, the novel
and the film starring Jodie Foster
and Matthew McConaughey was one of the two things
that really inspired me
and got me interested in radio astronomy.
I grew up in Manchester in the north of England
and in the countryside, just south
of it is the Lovel telescope
- Sits at, um, uh, a location called Jo Bank,
and it's where radio astronomy in the UK really began.
Thanks to Bernard Lovel, it's a approximately, you've,
oh, you've caught me out here.
Exactly how, how big it is now.
I think it's, uh, 300 feet,
I think it's 300 feet diameter dish, radio dish that, um,
that can swivel and point at different areas in the sky.
And so, as, as you've just said, anybody living in
within a reasonable distance of it knows this dish
because it is part of the landscape.
And I spoke to somebody, gosh,
probably a year ago now actually, who said
that they would go on their school bus every single day, um,
in the, in the Cheshire countryside,
and they could tell the weather
by looking out the window at the dish,
because if it was pointing straight upwards,
it meant it was really windy
and they'd had to what's called sto it.
Um, because these are huge dishes
and as much as they're made of materials, which lets wind
through, if it's too high , it can put a lot
of stress on the structure, especially a structure
that is now, uh, what going on for 60 years old.
- What is it that drew you
to radio astronomy as a discipline?
- Um, oh gosh. I was forced into it.
kicking and screaming , um, .
So I, I I, my whole career as an accident, uh,
I beca , I became an astronomer by accident.
Uh, I was originally on the pathway to be an Egyptologist.
Um, I really wanted to be a historian
and uncover the, these kind of histories
and decode different pasts.
And then I came across a book, which led me into, uh,
physics because it describes special relativity.
And the fact that you could travel in Thai,
like there was nothing that said you couldn't, blew my mind,
went to university and quite by accident,
did a cosmology course, which then blew my mind again
because it started telling me that it accessed that part
of me that wanted to, um, look back in time
and decode ancient things just like with Egypt.
But this was like, oh, this is 14 billion
years ago, that's even more awesome.
So I ended up doing a PhD in astrophysics,
and actually I'd wanted to do something I'd,
I would say fairly standard as in kind of optical, I dunno,
I didn't even have an idea, but I just thought I'd be using
the Hubble or going to a mountain in, in Hawaii.
And actually my supervisor was like, no,
you are gonna be a radio astronomer
and you are gonna be going to the fields
of the Netherlands in the rain.
And I was really disappointed,
- - For, for really quite a long time.
Um, and then I fell in love with it utterly.
And I think it is because of what radio astronomy is able
to do despite its perhaps
humble appearance.
So yes, most of our astronomy is done on earth.
I call it kind of down to earth astronomy, if you'll allow
that kind of weak pun.
Um, and it's
because we do keep our feet on the ground very much.
We're able to do a lot of radio astronomy from Earth
because the, there's a window in the atmosphere on the
electromagnetic spectrum, which lets radio waves through.
So whereas James Webb has to go up into, out
of the atmosphere, so do the big UV
and X-ray emissions, um, so does the Hubble even,
but radio, we can, we can save our money
and we can, we can stay on Earth.
And more than that, because we are using really long
wavelengths, it means that we can be a lot less
precious about how smooth our collecting surfaces are.
So whereas James Webb, you're looking at polished gold
to within, you know, a fraction of a hair's width,
we just stick antennas in a field meters apart.
And as far as the radio wave's concerned,
it's still a shiny dish.
So we can do everything on the cheap. It's brilliant.
And the fact that we can do that
and look to the dawn of time
and see the signals of the very first black holes forming
just it, once I got my head around what we could do,
there was absolutely no going back for me.
And I, now, I'm a total nerd for the technology to the point
where anywhere I travel in the world,
I look up the nearest radio dish
and make a point of visiting it.
So I visited some crazy places, ,
but it's been a lot of fun.
- Does that mean that Bernard level didn't
need to make such a big dish?
You could have just put some antennas in a field.
- This is very interesting point.
Um, at the time you needed that big dish, um,
because even though these antennas,
like it looks quite simple, just putting them in a field.
So for example, the Square Kilometer Array,
which I'm involved in building in West Australia,
that's 130,000 antennas about my height.
They really do look like the antennas you used
to put on your roof to get the tv,
but two meters high, um,
that the technology is just wiring wood,
but the cables which join all of those up
and the computational power that's needed to combine all
of those signals, we've only just reached that in terms of,
of, of technology.
Um, in fact, we're not even there yet.
We're working with Nvidia to create cooling chips,
which mean that the computers don't blow up.
We're working with fiber optic cables that, that, that,
because this is the fastest data rate ever
using this telescope.
So Bernard Lovelin in the 1960s post-war 1950s even
didn't have that capacity.
And so creating a large dish, um, where
you are collecting a lot of radio waves
and focusing them to a, like a single receiver, um,
that was the standard way to go at that time.
Uh, and it's not the biggest dish.
The biggest dish is in Puerto Rico,
and that's 300 meters across, so not 0.3 kilometers
and sat in the jungle of Puerto Rico.
And, and that that is, that's quite a sight to see.
I have been there, . Yes.
So I went on a bit of a pilgrimage
because I went, unfortunately after it had collapsed.
Um, so there, the, what the idea is this,
this massive dish collects radio waves from sky as it goes
above, as the Earth rotates.
Um, and it focuses it onto this huge kind
of receiver antenna, if you will, uh,
that's hanging over the top of it.
Um, that fell a few years ago
and ripped out a good half of the dish to the point
where it's irreparable, um, absolutely gut wrenching.
And I went there to interview some people
and they were still grieving very much
post-traumatic stress.
It was really, really very difficult to visit.
But for me, I visited
because nothing on earth has ever been built like that.
It, and the things that that dish has done, it,
it lies there in earth, in a jungle in Puerto Rico.
And yet it sent the first ever message we sent on purpose
to extraterrestrial intelligence.
It discovered ice on Mercury.
It mapped the surface of Venus
before any of the space missions had using radar .
It, it protected our earth from incoming asteroids,
which we've lost half of our capability for now,
which not enough people talk about
actually. Mm-Hmm. . Um,
- Yeah.
Yeah, that's an interesting one.
I, I I mean, yeah, abo right? It's, uh,
- Abo I should mention.
Yes. It's called Aris, the ABO Observatory,
and it's called the 305 meter Dish
originally. Yeah. .
- Yeah. Yeah. It's in contact, isn't it? The, uh,
- Film?
It's, it's, yeah.
So I stayed in the, uh, the cabin that,
that Jody Foster .
- Oh, amazing. - I know. It was amazing.
Oh, it was, it was, yeah.
It was a dream, absolute dream trip for me.
And do you know what? I didn't even need to be the
conference at the conference that was held there.
I was like, let's find the most tenuous link I can.
Yeah, sure. I'll, I'll go to that conference.
I'll learn about that. That's fine.
And I cleared out the gift shop. It was unbelievable.
I, I have cebo head to toe at home. Amazing.
- Amazing, amazing. Sounds wonderful.
Um, so, um, I, the the Square Kilometer Array, right, I,
I've been hearing about that for some time.
I think I've heard about it whilst at, uh,
blue dot Festival.
Mm-Hmm. , first time I heard about it.
I think, um, is that gonna inspire people the same way?
- I think it will. I think there is excitement
already brewing.
I've noticed the headlines in the papers we've been making
the front page when there's been, um, for example, MECA,
which is what's called a pathfinder, which kind
of means like a test array
where we're testing our technology
for square kilometer array.
That's been up and working for a few years
in South Africa now.
And it's created maps of the Milky Way in the radio
that made the front page of a lot of newspapers.
So that was, that was very validating to see.
And I think it's because we are now at the point
where we're producing images on par, kind of
with the optical, what your eyes are used to decoding.
So it's very important for me to, to,
to make people understand that it's not that radio
astronomy is less, um, evolved.
That it's, it's worse than using optical.
It's that we are not used to, um,
understanding the way that radio waves are, are processed.
Our eyes are evolved to look at optical
and every single animal on earth, none of them are able
to see in radio wavelengths.
So we have had to create this technology
that's taken time ,
but now we're able to produce images
that look very much like we might imagine in the optical,
and that just makes it easier for our heads to go.
Wow. But in the 1960s, you know,
we were discovering the first pulsars,
these first spinning SARS stars by, um, Jocelyn LL Burnell.
We were discovering that in radio data.
And, and lots of things
that we've done in optical were done in radio First.
It's just that it didn't capture the imagination in the same
way because it was a line on a piece of graph paper
that people had learnt how to decode.
Uh, so for example, black holes, you know, that was, we'd,
we'd worked out where black holes were
and what, how big they were all in radio data far.
And we imaged one in the radio data
a few years ago, for example.
So the Square kilometer array, yes.
I think once, uh, we get first light in approximately 2028
that will be producing such a level of science
that it will rival the James Webb space telescope.
And my hope is that when people think telescope,
they don't just think classic Galileo,
they also think dish or antenna. Mm-Hmm,
- .
Yeah. Absolutely. Um, well, I know I do, so,
but that's, that's the thing, right?
Because you said, you say that it was, you know,
there's this line on the paper,
there's in contacts, let's go back to that.
Um, they actually listen to it. Right?
And that's probably not something
that happens in real life, is it? I don't know.
- It is, yeah. So especially,
especially in the amateur community, uh, so the first ever
extraterrestrial, and that, by that I don't mean aliens,
I just mean, um, from the universe.
Extraterrestrial radio waves were heard by somebody called
Ksky, um, in the late 1920s, early 1930s.
And it's because he had his headphones on listening
to transit, the first transatlantic phone calls,
and he heard a hiss.
And those hit that hiss was actually the hiss
of the radio waves from the black hole at the center
of our galaxy, Sagittarius a this is what kicked
stuck kickstarted radio astronomy.
And the entire world was him going, what's that hiss?
And he built this big antenna on, on wheels
that he'd salvaged from Ford Model T cars
during the Great Depression and spun it round Yeah.
To work out where it was coming from.
And eventually worked out. It was coming from the
Sagittarius constellation,
and it took many decades actually for people to work out.
It was a black hole. But, um, yeah, that's sonification.
So we're used on earth to using radio waves
to transmit information, whether you are listening
to the arches or whether you are using a walkie-talkie,
or whether you are using wifi, we use radio waves
to encapsulate information,
and then we have to trans, um,
transform those into something that a human can understand.
Now, whether that's typed text or an image or audio.
And so we can listen through anything really.
We just have to work out that translation.
And people, especially in the amateur community,
they use their, um, their antennas, for example,
to study meteors.
You can hear meteors ping.
And so the, the labs that I've been to, for example,
I'm actually sat in, in Lincoln at the Minute,
and Lincoln Amateur Astronomy Society,
which I visited last year.
I went in and it was just going pinging, ping ping pinging.
And I asked them what it was, and they're like, oh,
it's just, it's just some meteors.
I, I'm sorry, what?
And, and for example, another one I visited in,
I wanna say Sherwood,
I think it was Sherwood Astronomical Society.
Um, yeah, they, they were listening to Jupiter
and Saturn, so you can hear the aurora.
So it was Aurora, I'm not sure the , the, um, the,
the northern and southern lights that you,
you, you see on Earth.
Those, um, on Jupiter and Saturn, uh,
because the atmospheres are different,
they don't produce this green light,
this green wavelength of light.
They create a lot of radio light.
And so you can, you can hear and it sounds awful.
It sounds really like, um, do you know what thein is? Yes.
Okay. So it sounds like, like a screechy thein.
Um, it's not pleasant to listen to,
but I, I find sonification a very interesting way
of understanding radio data.
- And here is the sound of Jupiter's Aurora as recorded
by NASA's Juno space, prob in orbit
around the Gus Giant instruments on board.
Juno collected the radio data,
and it's been transposed to the audible frequencies
with the absence of the wonderful imagery
that optical astronomy brings.
Radio astronomers are reliant on being inspired
by lines on a graph, on a readout
or on those rare occasions.
Sounds like this.
- I think it's that connection, um, that you can,
that you can get and,
and the privilege of knowing that you are one of the only
organisms ever to have heard that, you know,
no animal has been just happily listening to Jupiter
for the last few decades.
We have had to create this interface with our universe.
And the fact that you can do that for 200 pounds, which is
what my solar flare array cost at home, that I just have,
it's just a, what would you say?
I'd say 40 centimeters maybe, um, uh, on each side.
And it's like a diamond, uh, of copper wire
and some wood with a bit few electronics in.
And you can tune in to a beacon in Germany,
which basically the radio signal from that beacon changes
if a solar flare is coming through the atmosphere.
And so you can see the solar flares come in.
And the fact that I can do that for 200 pounds,
just having it in the background in my home office running
24 hours a day, because we're radio astronomers.
We don't care about the sun, particularly.
It's actually quite quiet .
So we can, we can observe in all weather inside.
And I still have a good night's sleep,
which is another thing which really
drew me to radio astronomy.
I'm not a, I'm not, I'm not a late night person,
and I've never had to observe in the night, ever.
So that's brilliant. .
- It might seem strange
to talk about people like Bernard Lovel as amateurs,
but in the field of radio astronomy, they were,
Yanky was an engineer,
and Bernard Lovel, of course, was a physicist.
But I wondered how we'd gone from essentially these
enthusiasts in fields to a full-blown astronomy discipline,
- War .
As with a lot of things, uh, unfortunately, uh, war creates,
uh, a lot of scientific progress, um,
because people are forced to quickly come up with solutions
and explore options.
And when it came to radio astronomy, people got
very interested after World War II
because there was a lot of radar dishes,
which is just the same radar is just a way of sending
and then receiving radio waves.
Whereas if you just set it to listen,
it's a radio telescope.
So a lot of physicists around the world
that had heard similar hisses and pings
and fizzles from the sun.
So the sun, for example, even though it's mostly quiet, uh,
there was two days during the Second World War
where it sent out such a large flare
that the entire home front radar defense
network was taken down.
So this is, was very important for people to go, wait,
we should understand what just happened.
And so suddenly the funding started coming in,
and people like Bernard Lovell, they, they,
they literally salvaged radar dishes from skips
and built their own, um, rigs at home.
And then when the Cold War progressed,
and Sputnik, for example, was launched, um,
the Lovel telescope was in huge financial trouble.
So much so that, um,
Bernard Lovel had been hauled up in front of, um, parliament
and had somebody visit his home,
basically telling him he was going to be going
to prison soon for, um, misusing funds public funds.
He hadn't, but he was just very over budget .
But what astronomy mission isn't.
Um, but, but, uh, Sputnik got launched
and suddenly Lovell was the only person
in the world that could trace it.
Only person in the Western world, sorry, that could trace
this, this new at the time threat.
Right. And then suddenly they were like, oh, okay,
now here's all of the money.
And it's the same with Abo actually, uh,
that shouldn't have been built.
Um, that was, that was built partly to look at the trails
of nuclear warheads in the atmosphere.
'cause they create ionizing particles and radio radiation.
Um, and yeah, that's, that's how they got the funding.
But it's, it's, yeah, .
- Right? Right. This is slightly off topic,
but I walk around cern
- Oh, now I'm jealous.
I've never been there, .
- Oh, really? That's amazing. Go. I know.
But you know, it, it looks to me like
that has just been built because we wanna know stuff, right?
There's just miles or kilometers of cabling
and tunnels and, you know, particle accelerators,
because we, we wanna know stuff.
It's not war that's caused that, right.
Are we, are we moving into a better world?
- I mean, yes. I think that funding now is easier to come by
for what we call blue sky research.
Um, the science,
and especially astronomy, were historically hobbies
for the very rich, the very well off.
And now, I mean, it's not that way at all.
It's, it's that we have to apply
for grants and get the funding.
Um, there's still a lot of oversight from, from government
as there as there should be 'cause it's public funds.
But it does mean that, for example, um, the search
for extra traditional intelligence, seti,
that suffered hugely because US Congress ditched it.
They saw it as a way to score political points
and said, this is ridiculous waste of taxpayers money
and actually banned NASA from funding anything, uh, to do
with, with, with Seti during,
I think it was the age of nineties.
Um, but for a very long time.
And that, that, that field has really suffered, um,
because of that, that political , uh, oversight.
But yes, I think, I think it's, there's a lot more respect
in the public sphere, I think for just wanting to know.
So for curiosity, for the sake of it,
everybody loves James Webb Space telescope,
um, the space telescope.
So everybody loves the images that come from that.
People can't get enough of them.
- You've talked about going to these different
amateur astronomy groups.
Are are you finding amateur radio
astronomers in these groups today?
- Yes. So I,
this came from me finding out about, uh, Jansky.
And then his successor Jansky was, was, uh, employed
by Bell Labs at the time.
And so he wasn't allowed
to take this hiss from the headphones into a
radio astronomy profession.
However, there was a, an amateur astronomer called Gro Reba,
or Reba, I've never been quite sure to pronounce the name.
She actually, and he, um, he actually gave up his job
and built up, built the first amateur
and professional radio dish in his mother's back garden, uh,
and maps the whole Milky Way.
And he was the only radio
astronomer in the world for 10 years.
And he was an amateur. And when I was reading
and, uh, researching about him, I was thinking, gosh,
I wonder if there's any amateurs
around today in radio astronomy,
because again, I'd never come across any .
Um, but they, yeah, it's not actually that hard.
So the bi British amateur astronomy has a radio astronomy
group, and then suddenly you see these little people pop out
of their woodwork.
And, and so I have visited several of these places,
and it's quite amusing
because they'll have the central little building,
a tiny little building with the actual dome
and where they have their, their seminars.
And then invariably the radio astronomy group
is in a separate building.
A shack normally a shed if they're lucky.
Um, and there's just antennas on every single roof.
Uh, and, and they're very different species
of amateur astronomy
because it's a totally different language.
And what I find is, whereas amateur astronomers are made of
anybody, of any profession
and background that has an interest in astronomy,
the radio astronomists tend
to have a very different background.
They tend to be electrical engineers, radio engineers,
radar technicians who have retired
and decided to take on a new challenge.
And instead of looking on earth, they've decided,
oh, I wonder if we can look up.
And so they know the technology a lot more.
And so it's, it's a really interesting set
of society, .
Um, yeah. And,
and obviously they'll have the seminars together.
And I think that that kind of cross
pollinations very, very important.
And you can see that through the literature.
The first time somebody saw Jupiter in the radio, um,
radio waves, they were pointing at, at Jupiter,
a very bright star looking thing in the sky
and going, oh, what's that?
And it was somebody in optical shot of it was going, oh,
that's Jupiter .
And I, right. That's what we've just found.
Oh, and same with Bernard Lovel. Yeah.
He didn't know what meteors looked
like particularly, or sounded like.
And so he had an amateur astronomer come over and,
and help him look
for meteors while he was trying to find 'em in the radio.
- These amateur radio astronomers, are they contributing to,
to science today?
- Not in a significant number.
Uh, there is the odd paper, which for example,
will have discovered, uh, a pulsar, believe it
or not, there are amateur astronomers are able to,
to discover pulsars.
Um, and that that's just incredible.
Uh, technologically, I can't really explain how ,
how, um, I could not do that.
So it's, it's, it is really incredible
that people are able to do that.
Um, yeah, so there's, there has been,
there was somebody a couple of years ago that, that,
that contributed to a paper in amateur astronomer
and his son actually, um, his high school son
who asked a question about electromagnetism.
Uh, and his dad answered,
and then they were like, oh, I wonder if that could be to do
with pulsars that they'd heard about .
They just, they, they, they contacted a lot of academics
around the world and, and one got back to them.
And, um, yeah, they ended up on a scientific
paper because it was a good theory.
Uh, so there's, there's definitely people,
uh, contributing in that way.
But I think the thing that is stopping them
having the same profile as say, that optical astronomers
who can sometimes spot, um, uh, me, uh, asteroids
for example, is that the rig you need in order
to do anything very high resolution
or very far away is,
is really advanced in terms of the computing.
Um, and that set of skills, radio astronomy takes
such a cross section of skills even academically that you,
you have to have hold departments of different people.
That, and I think I talk about this in the article actually,
is that the square kilometer array is very separated into
the electrical and like the engineering side
and the science side, they have different conferences,
they have different groups,
and there's very little talking between the two, which I've,
I've always found very interesting , but it's
because there's just too much knowledge needed
in too broad an area for one person to have that
that all knowing, yeah.
That all knowing radio I that you do, you do see some
of the old school people, the old guard
who really just are able to know everything .
Yeah. Because they built the telescopes. Right.
- So I wonder like,
because you're talking about these people, you know,
detecting pulsars
and having these, um, antenna on the roof of sheds,
which sounds absolutely delightful to me
as a man of a particular age.
And, um, I, it, there's,
there's also amateurs in other astronomy, like I,
I think about Galaxy Zoo, right?
Those are amateur astronomers getting involved in
essentially data collect, not data collection,
but looking at the data and looking for things in the data.
But this is more of a skilled set of amateurs, isn't
- It?
It's, yes. So there are, on the, on the zoo universe,
which is the larger galaxy zoo, uh, world,
there are radio projects where you can help detect, uh,
what's called radio frequency interference.
So, uh, the channels that have been knocked out
because the TV satellite's gone overhead,
for example, are helping to do that.
There's, there's, there are those kind of projects.
But yeah, these amateurs, I went to these groups
as a radio astronomer
and felt so stupid, uh,
because they knew way more than me.
And I would, I would be going in
and saying, oh, what's that?
And they were kind of going, um, meteor, , .
But really basic thing, if you switch on a radio telescope,
you will hear meteor.
But I've never switched one on myself, , you know,
I've always been using these huge arrays in the Netherlands
that are switched on by somebody,
or rather they're on all the time, the data is collected
by someone else, they clean it for me on that level,
and then I get the data and that's when I start my cleaning
and my analysis looking for those signatures
of the first stars and first black holes.
But the process is so large now
that no one person is involved in every step of it.
And so, even though I call myself a radio astronomer, I kind
of stopped calling myself that a lot.
In fact, I don't think I even introduced myself
as a radio astronomer on this one.
Um, because it feels very false.
, I'm more an astronomer that uses radio telescopes,
um, because these amateurs have, yeah, I could get them
to come and fix everything on the roof
of the physics building at Nottingham.
My think. Whereas I've been staring at it for two years
wondering why it's not working.
,
- I have a love for radio astronomy.
It makes me incredibly happy.
And I studied a little bit, a couple of,
like a long time ago, judge Rule Bank
and the University of Manchester did a couple of, um, sort
of postgraduate modules on their website.
One was, um, the radio universe and one was Seti.
And I was sitting, sitting in my office at the time,
which was nothing to do with science,
just looking at the Judge Bank website going, oh, wonder
what they're doing down there, rather
than work working.
And I saw these things and I was like, I'll do that one day.
And it said at the bottom of the page, right, um, uh, we,
this is the last time we're gonna do these, these modules.
So I was like, okay, I've gotta do them now. Right.
And I, um, did them kind of in my evenings.
That's so cool. Doing, you know,
learning about radio astronomy
and it completely changed what I was doing,
and I became a science communicator really
because of the joy that that gave me. Right.
- Oh, that's amazing. - Yeah,
it's a lovely thing, isn't it?
So would you recommend people like me who are just sort
of looking at radio, listening to this
and hearing about these groups, would you recommend they go
and get involved in their groups?
- I absolutely do. They're
very welcoming, they're very friendly.
It's a steep learning curve, however, it's very rewarding.
Um, and once you've kind of started
to understand a little bit more about the technology, you,
you, you have access to this wonderful thing
that you can even bring into your own home, as I've said.
So yeah, have a look, look at the radio astronomy group
of the British Ash, uh, amateur Astronomical Association,
, um, it's called Bar Rag .
And, um, you'll be able to find a group near you, I'm sure.
'cause I've, I've been amazed at how many there are.
Uh, and, and just start reading
because there are radio astronomy is,
is in every single field of astronomy.
It's, it's, it has contributed to the foundations of most
of our missions today.
Um, so yeah, you, you'll find, you'll find quite a few,
few good books out there as well
if you, if you do a bit of looking.
- Yeah. I've heard one, uh, at the start
of this podcast actually called First Light
- .
Yes. I, I, I do mention radio quite a lot
in that. So
- The square kilometer away.
When it does switch on, what do you hope to see?
What do you hope we will hear from?
- Okay, so I, two things.
The the first one that I'm expecting to see is I'm expecting
to be able to dive right back into the
dark ages of the universe.
So being able to see a film,
a home movie images over the, the time of a billion years
of these first stars
and these first black holes just beginning to form
and the first time they start emitting light.
So this first like bursts
of light in this dark, dark universe.
That's what I'm expecting and hoping to see.
The, the other thing that, uh, I think that we might find
is a lot more answers as to the origin
of life in the universe.
Um, it has a very big,
the SKA has a very big research section called The Cradle
of Life, which is looking for molecules that are essential
to life, but amongst the stars to try
and understand how it came to earth.
And also, uh, the square kilometer rate will be able
to hear the equivalent
of an airport radar on a planet 10 light years away.
So if something out there is emitting ,
a Hello message, this is the tool
that is going to hear that.
So there's always that tiny little hope
of something huge that we might actually be able to,
to make contact if, if there is anything out
- There.
Thank you very much to Dr. Emma Chapman for talking to me
for this episode of the Physics World Podcast.
And I will certainly be listening out to
what the Square Kilometer Array has
to tell us when it switches on in a few years.
In the meantime, you'll be able
to read Emma's feature on radio astronomy
and those amateurs in the February edition
of the Physics World Magazine
and around that time on physics world.com.
And we'll be back next month
with something else from this wonderful world of physics.
And thank you very much for listening.
- Physics World.