This is part Seeking QuietThe collection is a collection that highlights the quest for quietness in a world increasingly filled with noise. Read more here.
When you first drive into the National Radio Quiet Zone—the first of its kind worldwide, spanning 13,000 square miles in Virginia You can also find out more about the following: West Virginia—you won’t know it. Charlottesville, Harrisonburg and other cities on the edge of this zone are places where life is just like anywhere else.
The Appalachian road narrows and the mood shifts as you get deeper into the zone. The radio dial spins. Gas stations peter out. Cell phone bars drop. Cows stare.
As you cross the invisible border into the West Virginia Radio astronomy Zone (WVRAZ), and enter “Quietest Town in America” as the gift store hats, T-shirts proclaim, you may start to wonder if it’s you who has traveled back in the past. West Virginia’s tallest tower, the Green Bank Telescope is visible. It stands 485 feet, weighs 17 million pounds and has a 2.3-acre satellite dish that can “hear” faint radio signals. The telescope is like an ear-trumpet to the universe. But it can only work if radio noise on Earth is kept at a minimum. This means no cell service or Wi-Fi Start by avoiding automatic flushing toilets, Fitbits and gas-powered vehicles near the telescopes. Also, no gas-powered cars, Fitbits or automatic flushing toilets near the telescopes. This stuff emits radiofrequency interference. Since 1957, this has been prohibited.
Green Bank is the first place I went to in 2017. In search of a community that would share my distaste for technology, I arrived in 2017. I haven’t owned a cellphone since 2009 (and I’ve never had a smart phone), and I’m feeling increasingly out of place in a world that is awash with technology. Pew Research states that 91% Americans have a smartphone today own smartphonesThe organization’s first survey on this topic in 2011 showed that 35% of respondents were interested.
The digital fence seemed to me to be a better place, and it wasn’t just me who thought so. The observatory was then hosting around 30 media visitors a year, including TV and film personalities like Katie Couric and Werner Herzog, all in search of that most elusive of things—quiet. Irony was involved: once you told people where they could find peace, it became less peaceful.
What I learned while researching my book The Quiet Zone, To the dismay of the astronomers, many residents and staff at the observatory actually had Wi-Fi, smartphones and nearly every other modern gadget. The WVRAZ limits handheld and household electronic devices with a threat of $50 daily fines for noisy rule-breakers. In reality, however, there have never been any fines in the Quiet Zone history. The quiet in town depends on the community’s buy-in.
Jill Malusky is the manager of public information for the National Radio Astronomy Observatory that oversees Green Bank. If I want to scroll through TikTok videos and ruin my brain, I plug it in.
There are nearly 1,000 public funded radio astronomy observatory sites located all over the world. These include places like Green Bank. Chile’s Atacama Desert You can also read about the Australian outback. Satellites pose the newest threat to sensitive equipment used in astronomical and planetary defense, as well as high-precision geolocation. In 2023 there will be over 5,000 satellites orbiting the Earth. There are plans for many more. Currently, high-speed satellite internet is available in 99.5% the NRQZ. Malusky says that satellite constellations have an impact on observatories around the world. “If the wrong frequency hits the wrong thing, then it can fry equipment.”
