A Short Drive Away, the Largest Steerable Radio Telescope

The Green Bank radio telescope weighs 17 million pounds, can rotate 360 degrees in 9 minutes,
and can pick up space radio waves from as far as 14 million light years away. / Picture: Marguerite Gallorini

Two hours by car west of Harrisonburg, the Green Bank Observatory is home to the world’s largest steerable radio telescope.  This facility owned by the National Science Foundation might be, well, under the radar, but it’s being used for some very forward-thinking projects you might not expect – including a search for extra-terrestrial intelligence. WMRA’s Marguerite Gallorini has more.

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It is not easy getting to Green Bank. To reach this small West Virginia town of only 143 residents, you have to wind through mountain roads for about an hour. And suddenly there it is, sitting in the valley: a 500-foot tall radio telescope – the Green Bank Telescope, or “GBT” for short.

The reason this telescope needs to be out of sight, lodged in the middle of the Allegheny Mountains, is to provide a natural barrier against radio interferences from surrounding cities. The GBT is aiming to catch faint radio waves from as far as fourteen million light years away. Sue Ann Heatherly, Senior Education Officer at the Green Bank Observatory, explains how it works:

SUE ANN HEATHERLY: The dish is a mirror. So imagine that, if you're trying to look at stars through a telescope, you're going to point your telescope at a star; that light from the star is going to hit the mirror in your telescope and bounce up into your eye. The same thing happens with the radio telescope - the difference is that our mirror is not very shiny: it is white. And if there are objects out there in the universe that emit radio waves, we can see those radio waves by pointing our dish in the right direction.

That is the specificity of the GBT: it is the world’s largest steerable radio telescope. That means that this seventeen-million-pound metallic structure can rotate 360 degrees in only nine minutes, which means it can cover 85% of the sky, while most other radio telescopes are fixed and can’t cover as much sky surface.

And, as sensitive as it is, a simple cell phone could interfere with the signals it is trying to capture. So, besides the mountains, the observatory also benefits from the National Radio Quiet Zone: a 13,000-square-mile national preserve for radio astronomy, which covers a part of West Virginia, Virginia, and Maryland, and where cell phone towers are more regulated. But in Green Bank, in particular, there is no cell phone reception at all – a fact that tour guide Rebekah Anderson jokes about:

REBEKAH ANDERSON: When I went to college, where cell phone service – obviously, they're used to it – an ice breaker was always like "What's your name and major, and what's an interesting fact about yourself" and I would always say "I live in a place with no cell phone service" and everybody was just shocked.

More than half of the observatory’s funding comes from the NSF [National Science Foundation], with the rest provided by university or private projects.  One of those funding streams is for a project called Breakthrough Listen, also known as SETI – as in Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. It takes up 20% of the telescope’s time, looking for signs of alien intelligence.

HEATHERLY: The whole idea of using a radio telescope to search for signals from other civilizations was launched right here in Green Bank in 1960. Over the intervening years, a project would pop up here and there and SETI research would come back to Green Bank – but this is the first one, this Breakthrough Listen project is the first really well-funded systematic search where we don't have to worry about the project being canceled.

Recently, Heatherly says, the Green Bank Observatory also partnered with NASA on the InSight lander project, which is studying the interior of Mars and listening for Marsquakes.

HEATHERLY: This is a spacecraft that's been traveling toward Mars since May [of 2018], and it had a very tricky landing sequence and it was producing a little signal that the GBT could detect… Sometimes we work with NASA on these things. So we had a party – we had a landing party and it's just really exciting and uplifting to see some of the good that's going on, you know, science-wise.

The GBT’s influence is also reflected locally. It’s very important to nearby West Virginia University, where the astronomy department has expanded. Andrew Seymour is a staff scientist at the observatory, and previously studied at WVU. Last year, he took part in the discovery of mysterious bursts of radio emission, called Fast Radio Bursts – “FRBs” for short. Those are the same kinds of signals detected by a Canadian telescope from another part of space just last month.

ANDREW SEYMOUR: When you have a supernova and that explodes, it causes the core to collapse, it gets compressed. So this is basically the last step it can take before it becomes a black hole.

And when it gets compressed, it spins around like a lighthouse – and every time it spins around, there’s a flash of light which the telescope can time very accurately.

SEYMOUR: These objects are actually being used to help discover gravitational waves. It's what we call timing, or when we should expect these pulses to arrive – it could be due to the fact that a gravitational wave came through our galaxy.

Because of the big projects going on in this small West Virginia town, local residents don’t seem to mind being off the grid, for the sake of scientific progress. Donnie Ervin works at Trent’s, a nearby general store, and he says he loves being around the observatory.

DONNIE ERVIN: I like it here. They do some pretty interesting stuff; I love to read the articles whenever they find something new. Growing up around it, it's just part of the community.

This story appeared on WMRA News.

The Town with No Wi-Fi: Anyone Out There?

Green Bank, W. Va, is home to the Green Bank Observatory and the world's largest steerable radio telescope:
the Green Bank Telescope. / Picture: Marguerite Gallorini

Green Bank, W.Va.—the town with no Wi-Fi or cell phones—is home to one of the world’s largest radio telescopes searching for alien signals

Lodged in the valley of the misty Allegheny Mountains in West Virginia, the Green Bank Telescope sits royally in the middle of a field, its giant dish pointed towards the sky to catch radio waves emitted from space. These naturally occurring radio waves tend to be very weak and can come from as far as fourteen million light years away.

That is why the Green Bank Telescope—part of the Green Bank Observatory—sits in this valley: the mountains act as a convenient natural barrier against radio interferences from surrounding cities, allowing the telescope to do its intergalactic research peacefully.

What’s being done there?

The Green Bank Telescope (GBT) is the largest fully steerable radio telescope in the world: 485-foot tall—that makes it higher than the Statue of Liberty. It has a 110-meter dish that has a surface area of 2.3 acres—that means you could easily fit two football fields in there.

While there are other larger telescopes out there, the GBT is unique: this 17-million pound metallic structure can rotate 360 degrees in only nine minutes, which means it can cover 85 percent of the sky.

“The GBT is in kind of that happy little medium where if you have a smaller dish you can cover more sky; but you don’t have as much sensitivity,” says staff scientist Andrew Seymour. And the more sensitivity means the more radio waves you can detect.

“So you’re right in that curve between sensitivity and sky coverage.”

Seymour recently helped in the discovery of mysterious bursts of radio emission, called Fast Radio Bursts (FRB), which may be coming from near another galaxy’s black hole. The telescope is also used by universities across the country and by Breakthrough Listen, also known as SETI—Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence.

SETI takes up 20% of the telescope’s time. “SETI has a back end on the telescope that’s constantly recording and trying to detect signals like [FRBs], but it’s looking for techno-signatures rather than natural-occurring events.”

Technosignatures—or technomarkers—are non-natural measurable signs that indicate the presence of past or present technology: signs that could prove the presence of an alien world.

“The whole idea of using a radio telescope to search for signals from other civilizations was launched right here in Green Bank in 1960,” says Sue Ann Heatherly, senior education officer at Green Bank Observatory.

The project was sustained for Green Bank in 2016 by a $100-million donation from Israeli-Russian entrepreneur and physicist Yuri Milner. Breakthrough Listen is part of the greater Breakthrough Initiatives, a scientific program that Yuri Milner started in 2015, dedicated to the investigation of this question: are we alone in the universe?

The Green Bank Observatory / Picture: Marguerite Gallorini

Along with two other telescopes, Green Bank will help provide a complete survey of the one million nearest stars, the center of our galaxy, and the 100 nearest galaxies.

Who would have thought that this West Virginia town, away from everything and kept out of sight by lengthy, lacey mountain roads, is home to futuristic science looking at one of the biggest questions humanity has ever wondered?

How do you listen in on space?

For all of these groundbreaking projects, the telescope needs to detect very sensitive radio emissions —and the Allegheny Mountains are sometimes not enough against strong artificial radio waves. Anything from cell phones, digital cameras, smart watches, tablets, FitBits, TVs, Wi-Fi Internet, or microwave ovens can interfere with the telescope. It can come from more unusual sources too, says Green Bank tour guide Rebecca Anderson. “For example, we picked up interference from faulty wiring in someone’s doorbell once, so we just went down and fixed the doorbell for them. Simple as that.”

Another way against interferences is through the National Radio Quiet Zone: a 13,000-square-mile national preserve for radio astronomy, which covers a part of West Virginia, Virginia, and Maryland. In this zone, cell phone towers are more regulated—so technically, there is cell phone service in the Quiet Zone: just not in Green Bank, where there are only about 145 inhabitants. The closest place to get cell phone service is about 45 minutes south—and only if you have AT&T.

Donnie Ervin is a Green Bank resident and works at Trent’s, a local general store. He does not seem to mind the cell service situation: “Not a whole lot has changed. It’s pretty much the same as it was when I grew up— but I like it here. I like the quiet. I like it just the way it is.”

So, no hard feelings against the Observatory?

“I like the Observatory being here,” he says. “Growing up around it, it’s just part of the community. And when I was a kid, I used to take school trips there. They do some pretty interesting stuff. I love to read the articles whenever they find something new.”

All in all, life might be a little slower and somewhat stuck in the past at Green Bank. But everyone seems to be willing to take a small step back on modern technology if that means helping Green Bank Observatory make great leaps forward for science.

This story appeared in Blue Ridge Outdoors Magazine.

Former Ambassador Talks Bush, Trump and Foreign Policy at Miller Center

Former Ambassador John Negroponte (right) discussed the state of the country's current foreign policy with UVa's Provost for Global Affairs Stephen Mull (left) at the Miller Center of Public Affairs in Charlottesville.
/ Photo: Miller Center Facebook Page

On Tuesday [Dec. 4] former ambassador John Negroponte visited the Miller Center to discuss America’s role in the world, President Trump’s take on foreign policy, and his own 40-year experience. WMRA’s Marguerite Gallorini reports.

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John Negroponte has been the ambassador to Honduras, Mexico, the Philippines, the United Nations, and Iraq. He was also Deputy national security advisor to President Ronald Reagan, and the first Director of national intelligence under President George W. Bush. But he also worked under George H. W. Bush – and so he started the conversation by giving a few words on the late President.

JOHN NEGROPONTE: For George Bush, I think, a lot of foreign policy and a lot of his life was about relationships. He cultivated them, he nurtured them - and I’m not saying in some kind of superficial or, you know, just a guy who cares about his rolodex - no: somebody who really cared about other people, and he reflected that not only in his personal life but in his conduct of relations with other countries.

Fast-forward to today. Now, at the halfway point of the Trump administration, what does John Negroponte think about the state of American foreign policy?

NEGROPONTE: It’s a little bit like a fire or a flood going through your house, and it really boils down to the question of "How much damage has really been done?" Well, I don’t think it’s a total loss, and I think it can be fixed.

This story appeared on WMRA News. 

Faith Community in Charlottesville Addresses Affordable Housing

The 13th Annual Assembly of the Interfaith Movement Promoting Action by Congregations Together (IMPACT) took place at the First Presbyterian Church in downtown Charlottesville. For its focus on affordable housing, several speakers gave insights into the current efforts made on the part of the City and the community to tackle the issue. / Picture: Marguerite Gallorini

Tuesday night [Oct. 30] was the 13th Annual Assembly of the Interfaith Movement Promoting Action by Congregations Together, or IMPACT for short. And the focus of the faith community yesterday was: affordable housing. WMRA's Marguerite Gallorini attended the assembly at the First Presbyterian Church in downtown Charlottesville.

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Twenty-six local congregations came together yesterday under the banner of IMPACT, to tackle the issue of affordable housing in Charlottesville. Rev. Albert Connette, from Olivet Presbyterian Church, is a member of IMPACT's housing research team.

ALBERT CONNETTE: The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment has risen to over $1,300 a month; meaning a minimum-wage earner would need to work three and three quarters full-time jobs for that apartment to be affordable.

In response, interim City Manager Mike Murphy also came to the assembly to provide details and updates on the City's efforts to address this issue.

MIKE MURPHY: [City] Council determined that the Planning Commission should conduct additional community engagement, to ensure that more voices from low-wealth communities were heard. That engagement is wrapping up. I encourage all of you to come out on November 26th as we discuss the possibility of funding for the redevelopment of public housing sites in Friendship Court; to comment on our comprehensive plan in December; and to participate in our budget work sessions between January and April of 2019.

This story appeared on WMRA News.

Women's Prison Trains Inmates - as Yoga Teachers

The non-profit Common Ground Healing Arts has been offering yoga classes to inmate
at a local women’s prison since 2009. / Picture: Common Ground Healing Arts

Common Ground Healing Arts in Charlottesville is expanding its wellness services beyond the general population.  This year, the non-profit is reaching out to the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women to provide a yoga teacher training program. WMRA’s Marguerite Gallorini reports.

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What if yoga could benefit body and mind, even while incarcerated? That’s the experiment made by the non-profit Common Ground Healing Arts in a local women’s prison.  This goes back to 2009, says Marketing and Outreach Director Paige Ryan.

PAIGE RYAN: The goal was to serve about 200 women and to offer about four classes per week.

And this year, they actually have the staffing and resources in place to offer a 200-hour professionally-certified yoga training. That means that inmates can become yoga teachers inside the prison as well as outside once they're released.

SARAH MOSELEY: Now we're offering over seven classes a week; we have five instructors. We're planning to do it over about three months.

Sarah Moseley is a volunteer and one of the lead instructors of this program.

MOSELEY: They've got training Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday nights; and for four to five hours on Saturday. So it's a very rigorous training. We also offer yoga to the segregated populations now, so offering more kind of one-on-one specialty classes.

RYAN: So "segregating" meaning that the person is in isolation?

MOSELEY: Yes. So, what could happen is that a person in segregation would be practicing in their space while you are leading them and practicing alongside them, on the other side of the door. Women will tell us that coming back from solitary or from segregation, they'll tell us about how they've been practicing yoga and how having that yoga practice helped them get through those times.

And on November 3rd, the festival ARTCHO in Charlottesville will be fundraising for Common Ground, which only relies on donations for all of its services, including this yoga teacher training.

RYAN: The partnership started because they reached out to us: they identified with our mission of making healing services affordable and accessible.

This story appeared on WMRA News.

A Preview of the 31st Virginia Film Festival

This year’s Virginia Film Festival [Nov. 1-4] is expanding the scope of its film selection. WMRA’s Marguerite Gallorini has this preview.

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[Music from the Virginia Film Festival’s 2018 Promotional Video]

The 31st Virginia Film Festival showcases more than 150 films in four days, special guests, free events and parties: it can be hard to know where to start. So let’s take it from the beginning: 2018 marks exactly 50 years since 1968, and the social landscape is again shifting now, just as it did 50 years ago. So the festival will open its film line-up on November 1st  with the docuseries 1968: The Year That Changed America.

[Clip from 1968: The Year That Changed America]

RICHARD NIXON: I hope to restore respect to the presidency.

And on the theme of change and social movements, the festival will shine a spotlight on important issues of our time, such as Race in America. In this category, the two-hour feature simply called Charlottesville provides an in-depth reading of the town in the wake of August 12 last year, from racial divides to local government mistakes.

INTERVIEWEE: It is disheartening to see Charlottesville be pegged as this one attack and this one weekend.

The screening will precede a community address by guest speaker Martin Luther King III, followed by a discussion moderated by Larry Sabato from the UVA Center for Politics.

Beyond Charlottesville, the festival’s “Spotlight on Virginia Filmmaking” celebrates movies and short films from around the state, on a variety of issues – such as dementia.

[Clip from Revolutionizing Dementia Care]

BRIAN LEBLANC: It’s hard. Your whole life changes in an instant when you hear those words – that, you know, you have Alzheimer’s disease.

Close to 6 million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s – and the number is projected to rise to 14 million by 2050. The documentary Revolutionizing Dementia Care, supported by the Richmond-based Community Idea Stations, explores dementia awareness.

[Clip from Revolutionizing Dementia Care]

LAURIE SCHERRER: A lot of mentoring is helping people to understand: no, you can’t do all the things you did do, but you still can do a lot; you still have a lot to be thankful for.

The film will premiere at the festival on November 1st at the Violet Crown Theater, and will be followed the next day by a related workshop in Richmond for care partners, to share new and best practices for people living with dementia in the U.S. And if you can’t make it to the festival, the film will air on various PBS stations on November 15.

[Music from Rafiki]

The festival will also focus on the struggles of the LGBTQ community everywhere. In the Kenyan film Rafiki – which means “Friend” in Swahili – Kena is the daughter of a local politician and always hangs out with the guys. But Kena will make her first female friend when Ziki, the daughter of her father’s political rival, moves to town. But when the two girls’ relationship develops into romance, they must defend themselves against Kenya’s anti-gay laws.

[Clip from Rafiki]

ZIKI (played by Sheila Munyiva): Let’s make a pact, that we will never be like any of them down there.

KENA (played by Samantha Mugatsia): Instead, we’re going to be something… real?

ZIKI: Yes, something real.

The festival also features a whole section entitled “Middle Eastern & South Asian Sidebar.” The light-hearted movie Hell in India will be introduced by guest speaker Samhita Sunya, who’s the Assistant Professor of Cinema at UVa’s Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures. In this Egyptian comedy, a misunderstanding propels a band of musicians to India as a special forces squad to free the Egyptian ambassador and his family, kidnapped by an evil billionaire.

[Music from Hell in India]

The festival definitely has something for everyone: local, national and international movies, comedies, classics, documentaries, drama and more experimental films. Many guest speakers are set to make an appearance, including actor Christoph Waltz.  There will be discussion panels; and visitors can even catch a glimpse into immersive film technologies with the Virtual Reality Lab.

[Clip from The Other Side of the Wind]

Juliette Riche (played by Susan Strasberg): I just want to know what he represents.

Last but not least: the festival features four films in tribute to director Orson Welles, including his unfinished last movie, The Other Side of the Wind, which has finally been completed after decades of speculation.

[Clip from The Other Side of the Wind]: Is that what this movie’s about?

A Netflix documentary mixing archival footage and contemporary interviews also chronicles the somewhat “cursed” making of this movie, and the director’s maddening and tragic end. Its title:

[Clip from They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead]: They’ll love me when I’m dead.

This story appeared on WMRA News.

UVa Hosts Teacher Retention Summit

The "Teacher Retention Summit" on October 23rd gathered education leaders, policymakers and academic researchers at the University of Virginia - including Virginia Secretary of Education Atif Qarni - to discuss strategies and policies to better retain - and recruit - teachers in Virginia. / Picture: Marguerite Gallorini

On Tuesday [Oct. 23], a day-long summit at the University of Virginia gathered education leaders, policymakers, and researchers to discuss teacher retention in Virginia. The summit was hosted by the Office of the Secretary of Education. WMRA’s Marguerite Gallorini has been following this issue, and has this report.

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Here’s the Virginia Superintendent of Public Instruction, Dr. James Lane, laying out the issue:

JAMES LANE: I heard that there were about 1,200 teacher vacancies when we started the school year. 90,000 of our 1.2 million students in the Commonwealth are potentially impacted by the teacher shortage.

So how can we retain teachers? One way is better teacher pay. Virginia still lags behind the U.S. average by $8,000. But it’s not just that, says Dr. Jeffrey Smith, President of the Virginia Association of School Superintendents:

JEFFREY SMITH: The other piece that I have heard as superintendent - and I know my colleagues have heard as well - is greater and more autonomy within the classroom, so that teachers can teach and young people can indeed learn. Another area where we need some help and assistance: that's when we look at the licensure program. We heard that today as well: greater flexibility in converting the provisional license to that of the collegiate license in the teaching profession.

Virginia did take a first step this year with House Bill 1125, signed into law in June, which makes it easier for out-of-state teachers to get license reciprocity in Virginia. But at the end of the day, the main problem often goes back to money. In the words of Jim Livingston, President of the Virginia Education Association:

JIM LIVINGSTON: We have to put our money where our mouth is.

This story appeared on WMRA News.