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.

Comments

Re:Is that the Real Discovery?

[CDMA_Demo]

I doubt anyone will win a Nobel prize for this discovery but your question falls in the same line as: "what good is the discovery of black holes", or "what good is the knowledge of how many types of stars are there" -- (O, B, A, F, G, K, M).
Science has been at work for ages, and many discoveries are made just for sake of curiosity. Do you feel curious only about useful things? Your question above gives away the answer to mine...

interesting side values

[zappepcs]

Its interesting that this might bring light to the EMI and RF radiation that is all around us. The work to filter out that noise and reduce it will go quite a long ways toward making wireless broadband more available, toward making things more capable, quiet, and efficient. This amounts to a step toward making RF polution a problem that needs to be addressed. Sort of like taking lead out of computer parts, but taking unneeded and nasty RF out of the airwaves. That would give more spectrum, and better use of the spectrum that is used. This is good.

A Useful Link

[Detritus]

Deuterium Array Home Page

The signal they are looking for is the 327 MHz emission line of deuterium.