No Wi-Fi Around Huge Radio Telescope 224
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the makes-a-strange-sort-of-sense dept.
from the makes-a-strange-sort-of-sense dept.
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."
Re:This is news? (Score:5, Insightful)
> 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.
Re:Low power wifi? (Score:4, Insightful)
There is also no issue today.
Cat5 wires to every computer. Its not that big of a deal.
Re:This is news? (Score:4, Insightful)
maybe this would be a good solution http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/08/02/1322201/800mbps-wireless-network-made-with-led-light-bulbs [slashdot.org]
Re:This is news? (Score:4, Insightful)
And besides, if someone can figure out a way to make wifi signals stop at their own property boundaries, I'm sure that an exception can be made.
This is no difference from other types of interference. You do not have the right to broadcast your music loudly either if the neighbors complain and no one sober treats this as an infringement of liberty. If you stand naked on the roof of your house so that light waves travel over to the neighbors who can see you, then you will also find yourself from being restricted from transmitting those lightwaves (which you can solve by putting up opaque light wave blockers called walls).