Just before we go across just a couple of words of caution whenever you're
within the Ring Road there the helmet must stay on okay it's not because we
think the dish will collapse on you it's more things might drop off tools or
cricket balls or anything we leave up there when we're playing ... sorry when were working.
Yes hello flying friends and welcome to another video something a little bit
special today I'm really excited to bring this to you this is my video of
the in-depth tour that I was given both around and in and on The Dish, the
Parkes CSIRO radio telescope in New South Wales.
Now a couple of weeks ago I did a solo IFR flight over 7 days from Moorabbin in
Victoria all the way up to Longreach the home of Qantas and back again and
the first leg of that trip was from Moorabbin to Parkes in New South Wales
where I stayed overnight. And the reason for this was because I really wanted to
check out The Dish. So I spoke to the guys at CSIRO and I asked them if I
could have a bit of time interviewing someone so which they said yes I talked
to a guy called John. So thanks to Parkes to the world saw the moon walk with
the greatest possible clarity. Such a fantastic event six hundred million
people one fifth of mankind at the time were watching it. It was fascinating. I've
linked to it above here as well and we really went into detail about the Apollo
11 moon landings and the role that the dish in Parkes had to play in there but
at the end of the interview I kind of thought that was it. I shook John's hand we'd
all go home but he actually turned to me and said well would you like a closer
look to which I said of course but what I didn't realize was exactly how close
he meant. This is John and I walking up towards it and my first question to him
was why Parkes? Why build something like this in the middle of country New South
Wales miles from anywhere? Telescopes need to be in very remote
locations as a result. You can think of it as as the radio equivalent of
light pollution in optical Astronomy you wouldn't build a large telescope optical
telescope in the middle of a large city because you'd never see the faint stars
it's been blown away by all the light pollution so likewise with radio
telescopes you want to build them in remote location so that the radio
interference generated by the electronic equipment and appliances don't overwhelm
the really faint signals we're trying to detect. Are you able to tell if there's
interference locally? Oh yeah we can see yeah we can see them so we go and
usually it's someone with their mobile phone or or something and we just ask them to
turn it off. We have signs on the road asking people to switch these off
so but sometimes they ignore it. It's a problem we didn't have fifteen
years ago I suppose. Now before we go in this is a great spot just to stop and
look straight up because you get a sense of the scale of the structure. Wow. So so
you can see just how massive it is literally. We'll go up to the track up
there shortly.
So what we are observing at the moment is the breakthrough listen project which
is a search for extraterrestrial intelligence a five-year project
another four years to go and they're hoping that sometime in the next
four years or so they will find a signal that is of intelligent origin outside
the earth you know. It's one of several observatories around the world the other
one is if Green Bank that's a hundred meter telescope at West Virginia
it scans the northern hemisphere and we do the southern hemisphere and they also
using other radio telescopes for more targeted searches and also optical
telescopes looking for laser flashes from these civilization if they exist.
It's a pretty comprehensive project I think the chances of finding something are
very small but the consequences are enormous and so you know we that's why
we think it's a worthwhile project if something is found it will totally
change our understanding of not just the universe but our place within it. Is
there a protocol for if you find something the the chain of events that
have to happen after that? Yeah I mean they do find a signal though it has to
be verified from some with another observers to make sure it's not some
local interference that they found but once it's been
confirmed they're just gonna tell everyone because it's you can't keep something
like that quiet there's too many people involved. That's gonna leak out anyway
so don't even bother. They find something it's it has to be confirmed by another
Observatory and then once that's confirmed they'll just tell everyone. I
can't wait at the moment when you guys tell us that there is you know confirm
that there's something else. I mean you're not the only one I can't wait
you know but if something is to be found this project is so comprehensive it will
be, it will be found.
Well this is what we refer to as the old control room this is where the control
room used to be before we moved everything downstairs the old desks with
the globe and the dials that was depicted in the film The Dish used to be
located about there. So the way that telescope works is pretty
straightforward you have the radio waves coming down
from the stars and they're reflected off the parabolic dish surface and brought
to the focus where the radio waves are concentrated the radio detector there
converts the radio waves into electrical impulses we pre amplify this
signals upstairs then send them down some cables along one of the supporting
legs. Those cables then work their way down through the central column and then
emerge out here and then through various chains we can amplify the signal several
thousand million times. We digitize it store it onto disk and then ship it
around the world or transport it around the world via fiber optic lines. And
the reason we have to do this because the signal we're trying to detect is so
incredibly weak it's difficult to appreciate just how weak the signal is
but perhaps the best way I can demonstrate it is by using this
high-tech demonstration device otherwise referred to as a feather. But if I was to
release the feather and let it slowly drift to the floor
the energy that feather expended when it struck the floor was more than all the
energy ever collected by every radio telescope ever built in terms of the
astronomical data and so that's why radio tell us have to be so large
because you want as large a collecting areas as possible to collect enough of that
feeble energy so that you have enough enough signal to be able to analyze and
study. We have a one gigabit per second fiber line but it's upgradeable to 10
but we have capacity to go to 60 gigabits per second because the
data volume is incredible we can collect several terabytes of data every day
which we then have to ship around or transport around the world. This is what
we use to move the telescope around at the moment it's on computer control which
means that people off-site can take take control and move the telescope but if I
was to put it on NCP and local I can move it up and down left to right using
the dial. But this is what we use when we're stowing and un-stowing the telescope moving
it for maintenance or starring in motion pictures or anything else like that.
We're going to go upstairs you're not uncomfortable with, oh you're a pilot you're fine
So this level here is what we call the azimuth track level
and you can see that in the centre there's nothing actually holding it down.
It's just the sheer weight of the structure. So everything from this level up weighs a thousand tons.
It's very very finely balanced which means you don't need big motors to move it up and down.
So we have two motors, one there one opposite, and the size of washing machine motors.
And inside the gearboxes there's 40,000 to one gear ratio so we can move it up and down very easily
The whirring sounds you're hearing is the oil pumps constantly pumping lubricating oil
through the gearboxes so the gears don't seize.
...And you'll see this ring of mountains to the east then
and those hills the Harvey Ranges... here we go, you're going to see the telescope moving.
Do you have any problems these days with anyone flying drones nearby because I
know with the popularity of those these days. Yes well we haven't had anyone
violating our our area here but again they have to abide by the
civil aviation rules and yes and so on. It was about here that the in the film
The Dish the elderly directors stopped the beginning of the film where the
overzealous staff member doesn't recognize the old director and you can
see him standing there looking up at the dish like that.
I don't want to go, I don't want to leave it's too much fun here. I don't mind about the snakes I
haven't seen any snakes there's probably no snakes. I went to the gift shop.
What a brilliant day what a fascinating place I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did.
I really really enjoyed meeting everyone here and geeking out with the technology
Awesome.