In this episode of Cosmically Curious, host Patrick McNameeKing sits down with astronomer Dr. Nicole Gugliucci to unpack how a simple kitchen appliance fooled the scientific community at the Parkes Radio Observatory in Australia for years.
Transcript:
Dr. Nicole Gugliucci: In 2007, radio astronomers had started picking up these objects called "fast radio bursts." They didn't know where they were coming from. There was some debate over whether or not they were from very far away astronomical things or if they were nearby.
Patrick McNamee King: You mentioned that they're called perytons. What's a peryton?
Dr. Nicole Gugliucci: A fictional mythological beast — a deer with wings that casts a human shadow. The idea was, you know, is this man-made or not? Is this real or not?
In 2014, they put up some extra detectors around the telescope to look for sources of radio frequency interference, like the light pollution of radio astronomy. And they were able to detect that there was some kind of interference coming through that could have been a bunch of natural phenomena. You know, there could be atmospheric events, it could be related to lightning, it could be related to all kinds of things.
In 2015, they finally figured out the correlation: It was due to two microwaves on site.
You know when you get impatient with your microwave and you just pop the door open before it's done? That lets out a burst of radio waves that created this phenomenon. So it was like impatient folks who couldn't wait!
Patrick McNamee King: I also get excited about Hot Pockets. So, did this change radio astronomy at all?
Dr. Nicole Gugliucci: So, I was working at the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia, and they very, very famously did not have a microwave. When they did finally put one in, it was placed inside a metal box to keep it from giving off too many radio waves. That's one way observatories can avoid that.
Patrick McNamee King: As a radio astronomer yourself, do you make sure to wait for the microwave to finish before you open it?
Dr. Nicole Gugliucci: I don't live in a radio observatory. I can get away with it!
If you have questions about the night sky, shoot us an email at cosmic@nhpr.org.
