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17-Year-Old Radio Astronomy Mystery Traced Back To Kitchen Microwave
New submitter Bo'Bob'O writes: The BBC reports that the scientists at the Parkes and Bleien Radio Observatories in New South Wales, Australia, have tracked down earth-based signals that had been eluding observation for 17 years. These signals, which came to be called Perytons "occurred only during office hours and predominantly on weekdays." The source, as it turned out, was located right inside the antenna's tower where impatient scientists had been opening the kitchen microwave door before its cycle had finished. As the linked paper concludes, this, and a worn magnetron caused a condition that allowed the microwaves to emit a burst of frequencies not expected by the scientists, only compounding the original mystery.
I'd like to know which brand of microwave lasts 17 years?
Now the climate deniers are going to pounce on us all. What's next, a Tachyon Field Generator inside the Large Hadron Collider?
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
Thar she blows! Typo off the starboard bow! Give it the trusty nitpick, er, harpoon...
No such thing! They're all monks who barely speak above a soft whisper.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I'm surprised that the paper (http://arxiv.org/pdf/1504.02165v1.pdf) required 15 co-authors. It seems like the sort of thing I'd give to an undergrad to write once somebody figured it out...
Power is killed, but the magnetron keeps spinning and some microwaves can escape. Best to hit the stop button and wait a second before opening the door.
Somewhere in there is a Farside cartoon waiting to happen.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
One of my favorite films was "The Dish" staring Sam Neil. A slightly fictionalized retelling of how Parkes was used to broadcast the Appollo 11 Moon landings.
...and it takes a finite amount of time for the capacitors to discharge and the transformer fields to collapse.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
She always said if we didn't give it an extra second to stop zapping before we opened the door, we'd all die of cancer. I'm going to have to tell her about this for Mother's Day. :)
Now if you could finally come up with a cooking preset to get Hot Pocket and Burritos to cook evenly without an ice-cold center
An 8ms (falling phase of the 60hz power cycle) broad-spectrum burst of microwaves from a tired old oven won't cause even the slightest bit of damage to you.
And a signal that happens only on weekdays during office hours? They thought there was any chance that these were extraterrestrial in origin? "Searching the galaxy for 17 years.." How did the aliens get our calendar to know when we have weekends? (I know -- they went into the Home Depot and picked up a free one before going out front to find temp work for the day...) That still doesn't explain only during office hours.
The abstract tells a fascinating story all by itself. The signals that they were searching for were 2.3-2.5GHz, but the microwave emits at 1.4GHz. Therefore, the microwave is guilty. And then they needed to make sure that the "fast radio bursts" that these emissions mimicked did actually exist and weren't just another form of "microwave fail".
News for nerds, stuff that matters: microwave ovens emit radio waves when they break. Good to know. "Local radio observatory doesn't enforce their own 'radio quiet zone' to keep from chasing self-created interference, wastes millions of dollars looking for broken microwave oven..."
I'm surprised it took so long for such learned men (and women) to figure that out. I get elusive, I get intermittent... but still.. 17 freaking years. They already knew it mainly happened during office hours, that should have been a good place to start.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
An 8ms (falling phase of the 60hz power cycle) broad-spectrum burst of microwaves from a tired old oven won't cause even the slightest bit of damage to you.
Yeah .. but the microwave burst from that 50Hz power cycle in Australia is really nasty - its just like all the animals that either want to eat you or simply kill you.
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Patient: "Doctor, I get a sharp pain in my eye when I drink my tea."
Doctor: "Take the spoon out of the cup."
This is basically the same thing.
Proverbs 21:19
Enough radiation to be measured on the outside equipment? While I'm sure the equipment is - by necessity - quite sensitive, that still doesn't sound particularly healthy for anyone in front of the microwave when it was opened.
A buddy of mine swore that he saw a guy who'd just had a vasectomy and still had some kind of staples in his body scream in pain when the microwave was operated. I did not witness it, but the buddy was not known for exaggerating.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
This article claims that the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, WV, has the "cafeteria's microwave oven is kept in a shielded cage" and "Large chambers designed to absorb radio waves - including a 5,000-square-foot conference room - have been built to make sure that, as Sizemore tells it, "radiation generated in the building stays in the building."
I visited NRAO once and got to drive a diesel '69 Checker cab (no spark plugs).
although much progress has been made to detect the faulty kitchen microwave anomaly, we're still working here at parkes and bleien to track down the source of other mysterious goings-on. If anyone can help, we've compiled a small list:
Break Room: haunting aroma of reheated fish curry despite signage clearly posted warning employees not to microwave fish, kevin.
Parking lot: unexplained vehicles parked across multiple lines despite the lines clearly demarkating the area in which we park our cars, and dont leave them strewn across the lot like some B-roll from Mad Max, kevin.
strange noises in the physics lab: popping, clicking, whistling and humming are often registered anomalies in this area as well as the pop culture television movie soundtrack "frozen" being sung in a low, baratone voice while others are clearly trying to work here, just so you know, because grant money doesnt grow on trees kevin and no one wants to "build a snowman" so just keep it to yourself.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I told you the Burrito Nebula wasn't real
Table-ized A.I.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
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Now, to be renamed "Dufons".
Table-ized A.I.
Mmmm... burrito...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I worked at Jodrell Bank (the largest radio telescope in the UK) for a summer almost 10 years ago, and their on-site kitchen microwave was surrounded by a Faraday cage to prevent the microwave from interferring with signals picked up by the telescope.
To imply that astronomers had no idea that the microwave could be responsible is just a lie, this is a well-known problem that was solved a long time ago.
Why would they have used staples? A vasectomy requires two or at most three very small stitches on each side. I rather suspect that the patient was pulling his co-workers' leg.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Power is killed, but the magnetron keeps spinning and some microwaves can escape.
Magnetrons don't spin. The electrons in a magnetron spin (all electrons have spin) and they circulate in a cylindrical chamber. The magnetron itself doesn't move and it has no moving parts to "keep spinning".
The frequency is determined for the most part by the physical dimensions of the magnetron (effectively forming an LC circuit), but the frequency will "chirp" as the voltage on the tube changes. That's the source of the "FRB" (fast radio burst) they were seeing.
An interesting comment in the reference is that the cavity looks like the rotating part of a revolver, and was first manufactured by using a revolver die.
Best to hit the stop button and wait a second before opening the door.
The door button on all the microwaves I've used unlatches the door and triggers the interlock, but you still have to pull the door open. If you're so impatient that you can get the door open after hitting the button before the supply voltage to the magnetron drops below operating levels, you maybe ought to eat the raviolis or chili cold out of the can.
Why would they have used staples?
Easier to undo. From here:
I haven't seen a microwave with a door button in ages. Just pull.
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
http://marvel.wikia.com/Magnet...
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying. - Woody Allen
I had a friend who was bemoaning how his "crappy" AT&T DSL service would flake out every evening at about the same time, and he'd had techs out to replace his DSL modem twice, re-do the wiring to his house, everything! He asked me whether I was happy with TWC (I wasn't), because he was fed up and was going to switch.
We got talking in general. I asked him whether he'd also done any renovating around his house, no matter what type. He admitted that he'd recently replaced all of his exterior house lights with CFL equivalents, and I asked him whether any were on timers, sensors, etc. He admitted that there was an exterior flood light on a light sensor.
I asked him if that sensor turned on that lamp about the same time of day his DSL service flaked out. His expression dropped. He replaced that one light with an incandescent, and the problem went away.
The reason for Linux's success was due to the momentum that BSD/386 had built up. With the AT&T Lawsuit, everyone was looking for an alternative that AT&T could not claim was derivative work. Linux was in the right place, at the right time. They all jumped on, and ran! The rest is history.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
The magnetron might not spin, but it does have inertia of a sort. It's driven by a voltage doubler circuit off of a transformer: That means a capacitor and an inductor, both of which store a considerable amount of energy. Cut the power and it will take a few milliseconds before their energy is exhausted.
Undo? So they're actually providing for that now? When I had mine (in the last century) that was not even a consideration. A reversal was a $20,000 procedure with a 30+ percent failure rate. This should prevent some heartbreak.
I still think the patient was putting one over on his co-workers, though.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Undo? So they're actually providing for that now?
Yes. Couples who decide they don't want any more children and she doesn't want to muck with her hormones or get her tubes tied and he doesn't want to wear balloons for the next fifteen years get divorced and remarried and suddenly not being able to have kids becomes an issue for the new wife, for one example.
A reversal was a $20,000 procedure with a 30+ percent failure rate.
Yes, cutting/cauterizing a small tube is pretty easy. Sewing it back up after a few years is not.
I still think the patient was putting one over on his co-workers, though.
I think the fact that anyone knew he was feeling anything in that area means something was being pulled, maybe not the leg.
This subject of this article is exactly why I hate to walk into the kitchen and see 17 seconds on the microwave's timer.
This has even been on Slashdot before - probably more than ten years ago. I think I remember hearing about it on the radio (Australia's ABC Radio National Science Show) around fifteen years ago.
The item is an amusing filler dragged up out of the archives.
everyone knows they broadcast the fake moon landing from Parkes, bouncing it off the moon so it would LOOK like it was coming from the moon.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Don't worry.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
It's far more interesting to write "scientists have been stumped for 17 years" instead of writing "someone has finally put in the time to do some signal analysis on that microwave oven thing at a radio telescope".
I certainly heard the story of the microwave oven showing up on the sensors more than a decade ago and I've passed it on - the popular retelling has it happen over three nights at exactly the same time. I've heard it on radio some years ago and I think it even showed up on Slashdot at one point as a SETI story.
Boy are they going to be dissapointed when they discover it was a bunch of absent-minded scientists with a worn-out oven. "Keep looking, Qwrgplv. There still might be intelligence out there."
Have gnu, will travel.
http://www.spacebanter.com/archive/index.php?t-24091.html