The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence

Miles Friday: 124

Friday we got packed up and rode down to breakfast so we could get on the road and make it to our SETI tour at Green Bank National Radio Astronomy Observatory. They do these like once a month and they happened to have one the day we were going camping in that area. We got our boxed lunches from Capon Springs and got going. 

We got to Green Bank with plenty of time to eat our lunches and had some time to look around in the exhibit hall before our tour. 

We'd had to upload details about our vaccination dates in order to register for the tour, and masks were required on the bus and inside the telescopes. It was hawt on that bus. 

But! We got to go inside two telescopes and outside of three, including "the" Green Bank Telescope (GBT) which is 100 meters across. The first telescope was no longer operational but was significant for the SETI project. The second telescope was bigger and was still operational. SETI is no longer funded by the government but is supported by private philanthropists. All of the telescopes are controlled remotely thru mission control in the main building. Whichever scientist has time on the telescope controls it from wherever they are. There was a red button for local control and the tour guide told us not to push it. Jaron goes, why does it have to be red? 

We got to walk all the way around the Green Bank Telescope and could SEE it rotating! It was really cool. 4 sets of 4 wheels carry 170 million lbs of telescope, so each wheel supports just over 10 million pounds. 😯 

The observatory has flags for each planet at relative distances from the visitor center. So we passed Venus, Earth, and Mars right away and then on down the road our tour guide would point out Saturn or whatever. When we got to Pluto, the tour guide pointed out that its flag was at half-mast ever since it was demoted. ☹️

After that we had a talk from an astronomer and got to ask him questions. Julie observed that of the assumptions driving the search for extra-terrestrial life is looking for life like us, and the astronomer shrugged and said "ya have to start somewhere" which is fair, but also said that some thought is put in to looking for life different from us. There was a large signal in the 60's or 70's that was very influential in the SETI program called the "Wow" signal. It was a huge signal but has not been repeated and we haven't been able to identify the origin, like maybe a star gone nova or something. To be considered as a sign of intelligence, SETI looks for signals that repeat more than 5x. Jaron asked if there were plans to target the Webb telescope at the "Wow" signal origin to figure out what it is, and the astronomer said probably. The audience was really engaged and asked detailed questions and we got kicked out so that the next tour could use the auditorium. There is another technical tour that takes you in to mission control, so we'll definitely look in to when those are and come back. 

Souvenir t-shirts packed, we headed out for a short trip down the road to our campsite at Seneca State Forest. 

Julie ordered camping meals from Pack-It Gourmet to try something new. They have been good, but there are a lot of little packets and different directions. The Austintacious Tortilla Soup last night was super good with its packet of RealLime and Cholula sauce. One of the "cool prep" lunch meals Julie got for convenience takes NINETY MINUTES which is decidedly inconvenient. That will end up being a dinner if anything. Also, it turns out that several of them are skillet prep, which we don't have. So we'll see what those taste like cooked in the bag. This morning we are having biscuits & gravy not cooked in a skillet, so it'll be dumplings & gravy. Who knows -- maybe we'll find out it doesn't matter and now we have more meal options. (Update: the biscuits need to be cooked in a skillet and did not turn out well in the bag.)