GREEN BANK, W.Va., NBCNews – Every week, Chuck Niday patrols Green Bank, W.Va., in a vehicle that looks a bit like something out of the movie “Mad Max,” aiming to protect the largest steerable radio telescope in the world.
He searches for sources of interference, which can come from something as simple as a spark plug or an electric fence. And when Niday runs across illegal wireless signals or other electronics, he asks residents to desist.
“We just go in and ask them to turn it off, and leave it off,” he said. “People are usually pretty cooperative.”
If they don’t, he can send a report to the Federal Communications Commission. In 1958, the FCC created a 13,000-square-mile quiet zone to shield radio telescopes in Green Bank and Sugar Grove, W.Va., from harmful man-made interference, allowing scientists to study sounds emanating from galaxies all around the universe.
Cellphones, Wi-Fi, radio, even certain electronics are all regulated. And there’s not a single cellphone tower to be found for miles. The entire U.S. National Radio Quiet Zone straddles the border between Virginia and West Virginia.
Bob Sheets has spent his entire life living in the shadow of the giant telescope — literally. It’s visible from nearly every window of his home, and looms over his field of cows.
A retired English teacher from the area, Sheets is quite aware that people might consider him “road kill on the technology highway,” as he puts it, but says the National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a great neighbor. He doesn’t think outsiders mind much either.
“Most people that come to visit are happy to turn their cellphone off and get away from it all for a while. It seems to reduce their anxiety,” he said.
The remote town of Green Bank sits smack in the middle of the Allegheny Mountain Range, situated in a valley in the mountains that is naturally protected from many of the radio signals flying around.
It’s the closest community to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, which runs the Green Bank Telescope. One-and-a-half times taller than the Statue of Liberty, the radio telescope listens into space.
Telescope director Karen O’Neil explained: “We listen to galaxies, not just our own, and by doing so, try to understand how these galaxies were formed.”
Michael Holstine, operations manager, says it takes on some of the biggest questions of our time — and the quiet zone is the perfect place to do it.
“We‘ve been able to peer back to just after the Big Bang, 13.9 billion to 14 billion years ago,” he said. “We need quiet to gather all the signals that are being supplied to us by the universe. Green Bank is just about the quietest place in the country.”
