No Wi-Fi Around Huge Radio Telescope

JG0LD writes "Students at a tiny Appalachian public school can't use Wi-Fi because any such network can throw the radio equivalent of a monkey wrench into a gigantic super-sensitive radio telescope just up the road. GBT's extraordinary sensitivity means that it's very susceptible to human-generated radio interference, according to site interference protection engineer Carla Beaudet. 'If there was no dirt between us and the transmitter, a typical access point ... would have to be on the order of 1,000,000 km [more than 620,000 miles, or about two and a half times the distance from the Earth to the Moon] distant to not interfere. Fortunately, we have mountains around us which provide lots of attenuation, so we're not seeing everything from everywhere,' she said. A standard Wi-Fi access point would wipe out a significant range of usable frequencies for the observatory. 'It simply ruins the spectrum for observations from 2400-2483.5MHz and from 5725-5875MHz for observational purposes,' wrote Beaudet."

Comments

Re:This is news?

[John Hasler]

> That is a serious infringement of Liberty, IMHO.

Your liberty does not include the right to spray your rf all over my land.

> If the federal government wants to setup a radio free
> zone, they should do it on government owned land.

Read the FCC regs. WiFi on those frequencies is explicitly authorized on a "no interference" basis. If an authorized user complains that you are interfering you must shut down.

> It doesnt surprise me that the zone was setup in the
> 'government can do no wrong' 1950's.

You write this while putting up with the DHS and a president who claims the right to assassinate US citizens? You don't know what you are talking about.