Posts tagged Parks

The mystery behind radio signals that have baffled scientists at Australia’s most famous radio telescope for 17 years has finally been solved. The signals’ source? A microwave oven in the kitchen at the Parkes observatory used by staff members to heat up their lunch. Originally researchers assumed the signals – which appeared only once or twice a year – were coming from the atmosphere, possibly linked to lightning strikes. Then on 1 January this year (2015) they installed a new receiver which monitored interference, and detected strong signals at 2.4 GHz, the signature of a microwave oven. Immediate testing of the facility microwave oven did not show up with perytons. Until, that is, they opened the oven door before it had finished heating. “If you set it to heat and pull it open to have a look, it generates interference,” Johnston said. The “suspicious perytons” were only detected during the daytime and as they now knew, not during the evening when all the staff had finished their shift.

via https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/may/05/microwave-oven-caused-mystery-signal-plaguing-radio-telescope-for–17-years