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Listening for Deuterium
jose parinas writes "Researchers at MIT made the first radio detection of deuterium, an atom that the scientists claim is key to understanding the beginning of the universe." It turns out the actual detection wasn't the key, but filtering out all of the RF 'pollution' produced by nearby gadgets.
"At times, Rogers asked for help from Haystack's neighbors, and in several instances replaced a certain brand of answering machine that was sending out a radio signal with one that did not interfere with the experiment. The interference caused by one person's stereo system was solved by having a part on the sound card replaced by the factory."
So how can they prove Mr. Alien doesn't have dodgy sound cards too, and these are giving false positives?
Most of the more important ramifications for this sort of discovery aren't related to WHEN it started, but HOW it started, which helps to understand how exactly the fundamental physical forces of the universe work and fit together.
"Quoting yourself is stupid." -Me
fusion and medical research
But yes, deuterium is useful. It keeps your local star going when the base hydrogen fuel is getting exhausted. It acts as a handy intermediate step on the way to all those useful heavy elements produced by your local supernova, which can the collapse under gravity to give you a handy planet to live on which has something in it a bit more varied than plain old hydrogen. And, if you find a star a bit inconveniently large to use as a heat source, you can use deuterium oxide as a moderator when you invent fission reactors, and generate useful amounts of electricity without blowing things up too often. The Deuterium Marketing Board (a division of Intelligent Design Industries) has the slogan "Deuterium: it's part of why you're here to read about it."
Mind you, if you're a carbon based life form, you can have more fun mutating your genetic sequence if you use tritium.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
There's this thing called an ocean, with lots of hydrogen in it. Quite a bit of deuterium oxide can be extracted from it. In fact, back in the 1940s the Norwegians were extracting heavy water via a hydroelectric plant at Vemork.
Discovering more deuterium than we have in the oceans might be interesting but doesn't seem very necessary in the near term.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
The signal they are looking for is the 327 MHz emission line of deuterium.
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