LOFAR, the World's Biggest Telescope, Is Up and Running 100
HansonMB writes with this bit from Motherboard: "Back in September, Motherboard ventured into the English countryside to listen to the universe. There lives a brand new piece of Europe's already-massive Low Frequency Radio Array radio telescope: a clever EU-wide installation that uses low-tech antennas and supercomputer-power data processing to transform into a giant mega-telescope, absorbing cosmic radio waves from the full sky." That was then; now, says the article, "In the past month, using signals from the new station, LOFAR has delivered its first EU-UK radio 'pictures.'"
Re:That's one big shortwave (Score:2, Interesting)
LOFAR antenna work just above and just below the FM radio bands (the black boxes - HBAs - work at higher freqs, and the spindly things - LBAs - work at lower freqs). What's more LOFAR electronics are designed to supress radiation in the FM frequencies because they are so enourmous compared to the astronomical signals we're looking for.
Re:Larger than the VLBA? (Score:4, Interesting)
In some ways yes - in other no. See here: http://blog.lofar-uk.org/2011/02/lofar-largest-telescope-in-world.html
By the way I'm new to slashdot and trying not to reply annoymously by every time I login in the site dumps me out again. :( I'm Karen Masters - and I run the blog for LOFAR-UK (among other things). I wrote that post above.
Jocelyn Bell (Score:4, Interesting)
Interesting to hear Jocelyn Bell in this short video.
She is the lady, who as a grad student discovered pulsars. Her supervisor, Anthony Hewish, got awarded the Nobel prize for it together with Martin Ryle, but not she. To be fair, Hewish had co-invented the radio-telescope modality (aperture synthesis) that made the discovery possible. Nonetheless this spectacular discovery certainly contributed to his Nobel prize.
Ms Bell is quite famous in radioastronomy circles and has done lots of good work.
Re:EU-UK? (Score:3, Interesting)
I understand it depends on context. But for this particular story, saying "EU-UK" seems kind of stupid. Everything started in the Netherlands, and it involves a bunch of countries from Europe. In fact, they're all from the EU, so that would be enough. I can see that this title is the submitter's contribution, anyway, as the original article specifically uses "EU-wide".
Regarding your trips to "America": if you told me that, I would assume you were talking about a trip that included latin America. I expect people to use "US/States" and "Canada", or North America if they mean both (by the way, I assume Mexicans wouldn't like that...). If you were talking about visiting specific geographic points of interest, I would expect to hear "Rockies/Andes/Amazon/...", not necessarily the name of a country.