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SETI Disrupted By Cell Phones in Airplanes? 383

Posted by CmdrTaco from the but-he-needs-those-reeses-to-live dept.
Iphtashu Fitz writes "If, as recently mentioned, the FCC does allow wireless access on airplanes, could it effectively mean the end of the search for ET? NewScientist has a new article that explains how radio interference from airborne cellphones could drown out faint radio signals from space. Among other concerns astronomers have is that the second harmonic of many cell phones falls in a frequency band that reveals the molecular signature of newborn and dying stars, which is among the 2% of frequencies in this part of the electromagnetic spectrum reserved for use by radio astronomers. Michael Davis, director of projects at California's SETI Institute, stated that a single cellphone on an airplane 100 miles from a radiotelescope could exceed recommended radio noise levels by 10 times. A potential solution that astronomers have suggested is to install a miniture cell transceiver on each airplane, called a picocell, that would act as a relay using a frequency that wouldn't interfere with their work."
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SETI Disrupted By Cell Phones in Airplanes? More

SETI Disrupted By Cell Phones in Airplanes?

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  • No cell phones on aircraft! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by BWJones ( 18351 ) * on Thursday June 09, 2005 @02:46PM (#12772900) Homepage Journal
    Shoot, this is one more reason not to have cell phones on airplanes during flight. I worry about the public's lack of concern for science especially given the extreme right wing movements going on right now in the USA, but people do not want to be remotely inconvenienced even if it means screwing science. Perhaps if the appeal can be made to them from a personal sanity perspective. I got a brief taste of how bad cell phones on planes can be last month on a flight that I wrote about it here [utah.edu].

    Perhaps if this has to happen the picocell solution might be the way to go, but please let there be phone free zones on aircraft.

    • Right wing ... airplane. That's funny!

      Okay, maybe not. So, if they put a picocell on an airplane, how does that stop the signal that's coming from the cell phone? Maybe I should RTFA and find out, but maybe they don't say...

      • Re:No cell phones on aircraft! (Score:5, Informative)

        by kinzillah ( 662884 ) <{ude.tir.liam} {ta} {ecirp.salguod}> on Thursday June 09, 2005 @02:54PM (#12773004)
        Cell phones only use enough power to make contact with their cell. If the cell is 20 feet away its going to put out a lot less signal than if the cell is 20 miles away.
        • I thought they were going to have to use a picocell, anyway. Isn't a 747 just one big flying Faraday cage???
          • Isn't a 747 just one big flying Faraday cage???

            Even if it were, it wouldn't matter for cell phones. Typical Faraday cages, such as a car, are not effective in this frequency range. As is shown every day by the cellphone-talking driver in front of you. And by the phone calls that made it through just perfectly during 9/11.

          • Isn't a 747 just one big flying Faraday cage???
            I doubt it, otherwise people wouldn't bother to call someone to announce that they've landed before they've even taxied to the arrival gate.

            More's the pity.

          • Flying faraday cages (Score:3, Informative)

            by uberdave ( 526529 )
            As long as the windows are smaller than one wavelength.

        • Cell phones only use enough power to make contact with their cell. If the cell is 20 feet away its going to put out a lot less signal than if the cell is 20 miles away.

          That's incidentally the "real" reason to put pico bases on air planes. Allowing mobiles to connect to the network directly wreaks havoc with the network as that's not dimensioned to allow a single mobile to see dozens of cells at the same time, taking up "space" (i.e. bandwidth and added interference) in all of them.

          The mobile cell bas

      • A picocell can use a different frequency than the ones the phones use, a frequency that is less likely to mess with astronomers / etc. The cellphones will see a "tower" very close by, and use minimal broadcast strength.

        -Jesse
        • Yup, and there's no reason why you couldn't use the same frequencies on ALL aircraft, reducing the number of frequencies you'd need to block to a very small number. A smaller receiver set apart from the main dish could also be used to detect when cell transmitters were in the path of the main dish and could temporarily suspend data recording while an airplane was in the path.
      • It's the automatic power control used in mobile phones. The power used by your cellphone is controlled by the cellphone tower, so that if you are far away, you transmit at a higher power, and if you are near, you transmit at a lower power.

        That's also the reason why your cellphone manufacturer tells you that your battery life is dependent on the service provider too.
      • Maybe I should RTFA and find out, but maybe they don't say...

        I don't know whether they say in TFA, but if you had even bothered to read the summary you'd have seen the following:

        "A potential solution that astronomers have suggested is to install a miniture cell transceiver on each airplane, called a picocell, that would act as a relay using a frequency that wouldn't interfere with their work."
    • "I worry about the public's lack of concern for science especially given the extreme right wing movements going on right now in the USA..."

      Umm... what exactly does this story have to do with the "extreem right wing"?

      • Re:No cell phones on aircraft! (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Well, there's the fact that you can't spell "extreme" even with an example right in front of you? Or wait, maybe that was intelligently designed?
      • Oh, you know: Everything is always the fault of those dastardly people-who-don't-agree-with-me.

        You know they're dastardly, because they disagree with me. QED.
      • Judging by the mod points he received, bashing right-wingers, regardless of relevance to the topic, appears to be a guaranteed way to get modded +5 Insightful.

        • Re:No cell phones on aircraft! (Score:5, Insightful)

          by SatanicPuppy ( 611928 ) <Satanicpuppy@nosPAm.gmail.com> on Thursday June 09, 2005 @03:54PM (#12773708) Journal
          That would probably change if they'd stop trying to kill all science not based in the bible.

          Seems far-fetched to say, "The conservative head of the FCC is trying to kill SETI and Radio Astronomy by allowing airline cellphone use" but no less so than "The conservative heads of the Executive and Legislative branches of government are trying to kill modern biology by having creationism taught in schools" and these days that doesn't seem implausible.

          Politicians need to get over the idea that the scientific realities of the universe are whimsical matters of opinion.
    • There's two strikes against seti. First in the breif time since marconi and hertz radiated narrow band radiation we have gone increasingly closer to nearly random signals spanning most ogthe sprectum like white noise. As this has happended powers of indivdual transmitters are dropping, broadcasting is going to either digital spread spectrum or cable. It wont be possible to detect this eventually. The best chance at the present time would probbaly be the 24 hour modulation of the earth's rotation but woul
      • Your underlying assumption is the signals we may dectect are accidentally or incidentally broadcast into space.

        Deliberate broadcasts suffer from none of the drawbacks you describe.

        You also assume that our use of the EM spectrum is the same as some other civilization's use of the EM spectrum.

        Also an assumption everyone agrees with.

        So your conclusion SETI won't work does not follow from your argument.

        True, it probably won't work, but not in the manner you describe.

    • Screwing science? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jfengel ( 409917 )
      I'm all in favor of the phone-free zones on aircraft (hell, if we put the phone-users together, maybe they'll bug each other enough until they realize how much they're bugging other people), but a long-shot science program hardly seems reason to ban them altogether.

      People want to use their phones for work, or to contact their families, and if they already had the ability to use their cell phones in the air they'd consider it a major inconvenience. Calling it "remotely inconvenienced" is an understatement.
      • This is a good Idea that would also work in restaurants.

        Have seating like it used to be with smoking or nonsmoking. The no-smoking symbol in the overhead could be replaced with a cell phone icon, and cell use could be allowed only in some rows.

        You don't want to sit with people gabbing on a phone through most of the flight, there could be seating accommodations. It used to be a regular part of air travel to be offered seating preference.
    • even if it means screwing science.

      Oh, puleeze.

      SETI is the most inane waste of scientific talent and resources since alchemy.

      Why? Earth is such an insignificant little speck in a galaxy so huge that we can't truly grasp it's magnitude.

      Combine that with the fact that "energy desity" decreases in a cube function, and the likelyhood of us detecting ET is zero.
    • I thought this article was about SETI?
    • I'm sorry, but if your complaint about cell phones on planes is based on the fact that people might have "banal conversations" I can't imagine how you go out in public, what with all the idiots ruining your day by saying something that doesn't measure up to your standards.

      Yes, by all means, lets prevent people from communicating because they might say something stupid!

    • Re:No cell phones on aircraft! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RoadChris ( 732663 ) on Thursday June 09, 2005 @03:27PM (#12773409) Homepage
      I write this from my doctor's waiting room, and of the 3 people using their phone, I'm the only one doing so silently.

      One old fart is planning a fish fry while complaining about his high blood pressure, while a very large woman text messages with the key beep volume set one click below WMD.

      The problem isn't technology, but rudeness.

    • "... but people do not want to be remotely inconvenienced even if it means screwing science."

      Given that this possibility just came out, is this comment really fair? Can you really assume the general populace involved has any idea that 'science might be inconvenienced'?

      There's a difference between lack of concern and lack of knowledge. Don't start off the bat assuming people are intentionally being assholes.

    • Re:No cell phones on aircraft! (Score:4, Funny)

      by Eric_Utah ( 55690 ) on Thursday June 09, 2005 @03:53PM (#12773703)
      this is one more reason not to have cell phones on airplanes during flight. I worry about the public's lack of concern for science especially given the extreme right wing movements going on

      That's complete and total BS. Cell phone use on aircraft has never been proven to cause uncommanded wing or rudder movements -- on either side of the aircraft.
    • I worry about the public's lack of concern for science especially given the extreme right wing movements...

      We had better secure that then. It's difficult to stay in the air without wings.

  • ET phone home (Score:2, Funny)

    by maharg ( 182366 )
    that's you buggered then !!
  • Government Consipacy. Where's Mulder and Scully?
  • Although they are "extra-terrestrial" (in that they're not on the earth, exactly), people who use cellphones in crowded public places (like airplanes) are decidedly NOT intelligent, thus won't be detected.
  • Nothing against the organization, but did they really think they can reserve the entire sky for their software?

  • Here's an idea. (Score:3, Funny)

    by ilyanep ( 823855 ) on Thursday June 09, 2005 @02:51PM (#12772967) Journal
    A mini cell on each plane that could play back a message saying something like "We told you not to use your cell phone, so turn it off!"

  • And yet... (Score:4, Funny)

    by decipher_saint ( 72686 ) on Thursday June 09, 2005 @02:52PM (#12772982)
    Still no intelligent life eh?
  • Wouldn't an advanced civilization have developed a means of communication that can penetrate whatever disturbance would come from members of their civilization communicating while on aircraft?

    • Wouldn't an advanced civilization have developed a means of communication that can penetrate whatever disturbance would come from members of their civilization communicating while on aircraft?

      I'm sure they would, if they were meaning to contact us. The mission behind SETI is, among other things, to search for radio waves that will be transmitted from any sufficiently advanced civilization as we know it. Just like on earth these radio waves will be broadcast from the planet whether the people on the plan

  • I don't want some fat bastard screaming into my ear because his caller can't hear him over the sound of flight, and/or the air pressure pushing on his inner eardrum. It's bad enough that we're crammed into these flights like cattle as it is. I try to be considerate of those around me when flying. No huge laptops (12" PowerBook is ok), no noisy electronics, earbuds turned down to a below-reasonable volume.

    The guy sitting next to me is not more important than my headache, when it comes to matters of persona
    • I agree with you. I want every excuse for banning cell phones on an airplane to be considered - valid or not!!!

      I still can't beleive that cell phones can interfere with navigation equipment of a jumbo jet with the lastest avionics, unless you're in a small plane - and you're in the cockpit, as I have experienced. Yes, I'm a pilot, not an ATP, but I'm a private pilot - C172s and such...

      • I was in the Civil Air Patrol, myself, for a few years. I know all about what you're saying.

        And I do agree with you; cell phones disrupting navigational equipment is all bunk. I mean, think about it. If terrorists really wanted to down aircraft, they wouldn't need bombs or knives, or even guns, which is what the TSA is searching for. Just turn that cell phone on, kick back, and watch the fun! I bet a B1RD is a bigger concern than a cell phone.

  • i understand now.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by zxnos ( 813588 ) <zxnoss@gmail.com> on Thursday June 09, 2005 @02:53PM (#12772991)
    this is why the aliens gave us cell phone technology.

  • Install in Aircraft (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Mac Nazgul ( 196332 ) on Thursday June 09, 2005 @02:53PM (#12772993)
    You want to install what in an aircraft?

    As a government licensed aircraft mechanic I could tell you that is completely infeasible because there are simply too many airplanes in the sky to see that it is installed and the govenmental approvals to install such a device (unless the airplane is experimental everything installed in an airplane has to be FAA approved) along with the costs would see that this never happens.

    My question is that isn't this already happening when people forget to turn off their cell phones and it sits in standy searching for a network?

    • Re:Install in Aircraft (Score:3, Insightful)

      by BrK ( 39585 )
      Why can't it happen? Isn't this essentially what happened with the in-flight phones they installed in the 90's?
    • With the number of aircraft in commercial aviation, there will be at least a couple of manufacturers of pico-cell hardware that will want the market bad enough to bear part of the burden of getting FAA approval for the equipment. These companies will likely work to develop the process to tie into existing airframes, or work with builders (Airbus and Boeing) to get the equipment designed into the aircraft systems. Several major airlines will also front part of the cost, just to be able to provide a service t
    • Lufthansa are putting picocells on their aircraft so you will be able to connect to it and pay them a hefty fee to use your own GSM/GPRS enabled cellphone As for you being a mechanic, well, if you tried to establish a position of authority you failed miserably. Phones in the air Mobile phones could soon be following Wi-Fi into the stratosphere. WirelessCabin, an EC-funded consortium led by the German Aerospace Centre with members including Airbus, Siemens and Ericsson, will this summer trial a system tha

  • What am I missing here (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jayhawk88 ( 160512 ) <jayhawk88@gmail.com> on Thursday June 09, 2005 @02:53PM (#12772998)
    Isn't it time to investigate satellites for this sort of thing? Pointing out instead of in? I know maybe this isn't ideal since the satellite is moving both relative to the earth and the sky, it would probably make it difficult to lock onto any signal that was found? I got a B's in Physics, someone help me out here.

    Seems like this would solve a lot of interference problems though, and perhaps even give you much better results. Is it just the cost factor that keeps this from happening?
    • The atmosphere is almost completely transparent to the signals they're looking at. Receiving ability depends on two things: directionality of the antenna and area of the antenna. You can simulate the first one with interferometry, but that won't help you pick up weak signals. To paraphrase muscle car owners: There's no replacement for area. (dang there's gotta be a way to make that rhyme.)
  • Why does not the SETI project simply build/launch a robotic radioobservatory to the side of the moon that is always turned away from us? This way they will have the entire moon as a sheld from human created radiowaves.

    Also it should not cost THAT much, I mean, if nasa can send two rovers to Mars, SETI should be able to send a observatory the much shorter distance to the Moon on public donations?
    • Also it should not cost THAT much, I mean, if nasa can send two rovers to Mars, SETI should be able to send a observatory the much shorter distance to the Moon on public donations?

      Have you SEEN Arecibo? Or the VLA? Compare that in size to our beloved rovers. Then let's talk about cost of transport to the moon.

  • Good.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rwven ( 663186 ) on Thursday June 09, 2005 @03:02PM (#12773119)
    I think SETI is one of the most serious wastes of resources ever dreamed up. All that ridiculous funding could go to something much more important than trying to find something that probably wouldnt contact us even if it could...if it even exists... nail this as flamebait if you want, but if "ET" wanted to let us know he was there, he'd find a way to get around our cell phone signals. ;) This is just a bunch of wacko's griping because they're bored waiting for....nothing.....to happen.

    • Re:Good.... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by That's Unpossible! ( 722232 ) * on Thursday June 09, 2005 @04:56PM (#12774329)
      I think SETI is one of the most serious wastes of resources ever dreamed up.

      And I think your use of Slashdot is one of the most serious wastes of resources ever dreamed up -- but I'm not paying for it, so I don't really give a shit.

      All that ridiculous funding...

      What ridiculous funding? From the SETI website:

      "All SETI research conducted by the Institute since 1994 has been funded by private, philanthropic support for Project Phoenix and advance design work on the Allen Telescope Array and next generation SETI systems."

      If you want to talk about ridiculous funding, I could name about 50 government bureaucracies for you, though. ... could go to something much more important... ...to you... ...than trying to find something that probably wouldnt contact us even if it could...

      The point of SETI is to discover extra-terrestrial intelligence. It would be a major success just to prove there is ET, even if we could never contact them or have a conversation.
    • rendering an opinion and looking like a fool.

      SETI is privatly paid for, no tax dollars are used.

      About detecting:
      The point is to find a signal that is evidence that another intelligent race has existed at sometime.
      In that vain, they are looking for evidence, not direct transmissions. Like residual radio signals.
      Talking would be great, not likly.

      "if you want, but if "ET" wanted to let us know he was there, he'd find a way to get around our cell phone signals."

      considering the power requirements to reach lo
  • Build a radio-telescope on the dark side of the moon, effectively using the moon itself as a shield from the earth's "noise" and transmit the data back to earth for analysis.
  • I'd rather see a kind of plugin interface on the plane. A wire ( or not ) that connects my phone to the seat i'm at. This then goes into the planes system, and then the signal is amped and sent out.

    Perhaps if we did something like this instead we'd be able to tell SETI what this looks like and filter it out. Unless just the signal itself would disrupt it ( I didn't RTFA...sorry ).

  • The FCC could also tighten up emissions standards for cellular phones. The problem is that the phones are so damn small. Are there any space-efficient filters that provide the out-of-band attenuation of a good cavity filter?

  • the article's title is a little misleading (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Doctor Device ( 890418 ) on Thursday June 09, 2005 @03:09PM (#12773183)
    It should be pointed out that the problem is bigger than just SETI not being able to hear the aliens. most of the deep-sky viewing done form earth is done using radio telescopes. the problem with cell-phones on planes is that it potentially throws a ton of interfering signal data into the telescope's FOV. nevermind that nobody needs to be talking on their cell-phone while flying, I'd rather the telescopes keep working (there's way too much space up there for us to be the only intelligent thing in it).

  • Nonsensical (Score:2, Interesting)

    by sunderland56 ( 621843 )
    A typical aircraft already has a high-powered weather radar dish, several VHF transmitters for voice communications (with air traffic control, etc), a transmitter to talk with the airlines' own ground control, and usually an AirPhone transmitter (for all those $5/min phones in every seat back). With all that RF noise going on, what's a few more very-low-power UHF cell phones??
    • The RF noise from all of the on-board equipment is going to depend greatly on their transmitter design. It isn't difficult or expensive to greatly reduce out-of-band noise with some simple passive filters.
    • All that stuff you mentioned doesn't interfere with the 2% radio band that is reserved for astronomers, the cell phones do.

  • Another reason to fund space based radioastronomy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Chairboy ( 88841 ) on Thursday June 09, 2005 @03:09PM (#12773194) Homepage
    This is not the first time that this argument has been made. ...but the first time was 20-30 years before cell phones were invented.

    Humanity has unleashed a veritable plethora of rf emitting devices. Television broadcast towers, satellites, anything electrical... they all leak rf that's thousands (if not millions) of times more powerful then the signals coming in from distant stars.

    Banning cell phones on planes BECAUSE of this is like using a Sharpie marker to turn a sucking chest wound into a smiley face. You (the pen wielder) might feel better, but it's not going to solve the real problem one iota.

    The real solution is to invest in building radio telescopy infrastructure on the far side of the moon. Either there, or in a heliocentric orbit on the opposite side of the sun at 1 AU. Those are the only two places in the universe that have are always shadowed from Earth based broadcasts.

    Additionally, there are frequencies that are absorbed by the O2 in our atmosphere, so radiotelescopes in space would have better 'bandwidth' to observe.

    Finally, it's unlikely that the cell phone industry will finally be convinced to go to pico-repeaters because of the inconvenience that radio telescopy scientists encounter. It'll be because pico-repeaters will make cell phones work in places they don't currently. Deep garages, underground installations, steel buildings, small valleys... these are economically driven reasons to adopt the technology. Scientists (the normal kind, not the mad kind) are usually poor, so the money just isn't there.

    Pick your battles, and pick a winning strategy to get the tech you want. Radio telescopes... they ain't it.
    • That's not cost effective. It would be cheaper to give the airlines the pico-repeaters than to even plan a trip to the moon.

      Then you have the cost of hauling the stuff up there. Those radio telescopes are huge. That's a lot steel to even put in orbit, much less land on the lunar surface.

      I still agree that it's a good idea, but not for the cost reasons.

  • Regarding the SETI program and the like (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SamMichaels ( 213605 ) on Thursday June 09, 2005 @03:09PM (#12773196)
    3 scenarios guys:

    1) Other civilizations are below our technological level....which means we won't see them at all.
    2) They're equal to ours...and since we're unable to do much of anything beyond our little neighborhood, we won't see them at all.
    3) They're far more advanced than us...which means they have the smarts to avoid detection so we won't see them at all.

    Keeping this in mind, explain to me again why we need to change the entire commercial aircraft industry (FCC approval + FAA approval + thousands of aircrafts + world-compatible technology) when there are easier ways to try and avoid our RF interference (satellites, moon, probes, etc). TFA didn't impress me.


    • I wonder how true that is. Its reasonable to think that we will only be blasting radio frequencies into space at our current rate for ~200 years total in a 6 billion year history. Digital signals are at near background rates even here. That makes the odds much harder to find with projects like SETI.

      But maybe there are other nonintentional radio frequencies that will persist beyond that.

      Catching communication sounds very far fetched though.

    • Re:Regarding the SETI program and the like (Score:5, Interesting)

      by slashjames ( 789070 ) on Thursday June 09, 2005 @03:56PM (#12773727)
      The FCC said that SETI could use this frequency. They did this before cell phones were invented. This RF pollution scenario is EXACTLY like the problems with BPL. BPL kills amatuer radio, cell phones in planes kill radio astronomy.

      If the FCC was doing it's job, it wouldn't be a problem. However, I'm betting the FCC will look the other way since the cell phone industry has more money than radio astronomers...

    • Re:Or.... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by vertinox ( 846076 )
      4)They're far more advanced than us and they are on their way now to put an end to all this nonsense. After all... The noisy humans might be causing interference with the "Aliens" FCC regulations. That or demand we convert to their religion or sell us beads for Earth and give us nasty diseases like most other advanced civilizations do when they meet less civilized societies.

    • Repeat after me... (Score:3, Informative)

      by MAdMaxOr ( 834679 )
      There is more to radio astronomy than the search for other life in the universe. <pause> There is more to..

  • SETI?? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Pedrito ( 94783 ) on Thursday June 09, 2005 @03:13PM (#12773245)
    It's not like they're going to find anything anyway... I do care about the interference with other astronomical work, though. And as if there aren't cell phones in enough places, damn, the last thing I want is to be on a plane with 50 people talking on their cell phones.

    Too bad those little personal cell phone jammers are illegal in the States. Otherwise I'd carry one around with me. I'm sick of people too busy talking on the phone to drive, or walking down the aisle of the supermarket asking some poor nitwit on the other end of the phone, "Should I buy the ice cream? It's only got 9 million calories. Oooh, trash bags are on sale."

    Maybe it's just me, but I don't want to hear people talking on their cell phone anywhere, but especially not in a crowded airplane.
  • is there a way that I can get a picocell for my house? Requirements are that it has to cheap, small, and legal (or at least not a felony.
  • God what a nightmare that would be. Give me a freakin' break, please. Business people want to "maximize their productive time", fine, let them do it in business class. No business class on the discaount airlines? Sorry, no cell phones either.

    On the other hand I don't think interference with SETI should be a reason to ban them. If that's the best argument against using cell phones on planes then the battle is already lost.

    SETI is a privately funded operation, right? Well so are cell phone companies a

  • What are the odds? (Score:5, Funny)

    by rdurell ( 827253 ) on Thursday June 09, 2005 @03:23PM (#12773352)
    ET: "Can you hear me now?"

    SETI Scientist: "Damn cell phone interference."
  • which is among the 2% of frequencies in this part of the electromagnetic spectrum reserved for use by radio astronomers

    So, if the plane is on line of radio sight, it could affect 2% of data captured. So, in a day, I have maybe 5 minutes of 2% bad data searching for ET vs a very practical use of cell phone.

    Not to troll, but whats next, using microwave oven disrupts SETI, so we need to stop using microwave?

  • "What? Spend a couple of thousand dollars per airplane on some feature we don't really need so a buncha egghead scientists can look for ET? Ha! Get real. We have better things to worry about, like not going out of business!"
  • I love how eggheads and academics get thier panties in a wad when societies advancing use of technology gets in their way.

    The answer here is self evident. If you want to study deep space, you need a presense in...deep space. At least consider the ramifications of having an observatory unhindered by terrestrial atmosphere, radiation, noise pollution, and so on.
  • Well darn... I guess we need a moon base for that new deep space radio telescope

  • only a problem in the US? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Suppafly ( 179830 ) <(ten.ylfappus) (ta) (todhsals)> on Thursday June 09, 2005 @03:40PM (#12773579)
    If cellphones on planes were a legitimate problem, wouldn't it be a problem everywhere else in the world where cellphones are already allowed on planes?
  • Not that the search for extra terrestrial life isn't a worthy cause, but there's a better reason for picocells on airplanes.

    Please, correct me if I'm wrong. When you make a connection to a cell phone tower, you'll connect to the closest towers. Usually this is only two or three. While you're on an airplane though, you tend to pick up many more (several dozen?) towers, and connect to all of them. You're also moving through a coverage area faster, taking up a whole swath of towers.

    I know, boo hoo, they're using up the poor phone companies resources. But I'd rather not have to wait for a passing 747 to get out of range before I can make a call.

    It makes more sense to have the plane be its own cell phone tower, and route the calls out through it and not taking up channels on normal cell phone towers. Oh yeah, and it'd be nice to cut out some of the interference.

    Then again, I could be completely talking out of my ass. Hopefully someone in the know will come along and smite me or expend on this though/
  • I'm sure that cell phones will be capable of it soon, if they aren't already...

    What if people, on their cell phones, on the airplane, were to be running SETI@Home?

  • Parallax View (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Thursday June 09, 2005 @04:11PM (#12773858) Homepage Journal
    Aircraft move very rapidly across a radio telescope's field of view, while stars are nearly stationary. This kind of noise is yet another argument for phased arrays of radio telescopes, networked together. Their parallax should be more than sufficient to distinguish Earth noise from stellar signals. Once in phased arrays, all the other benefits, from resolution to increased coverage, will arrive. Overcoming the inevitable aerial radio noise might just be the excuse we need to get to a more useable radio telescopy.

  • The problem with picocells... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by eyegone ( 644831 ) on Thursday June 09, 2005 @05:24PM (#12774580)

    ...is what happens if one goes down. Suddenly, all of the phones on the plane start scanning for another connection -- at full power.

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