
Identifying the source of perytons at the Parkes radio telescope - xioxox
http://arxiv.org/abs/1504.02165
======
ChuckMcM
Somewhere, in a cold and desolate corner of the world, there is a security
shack where the impatient security guard pulls open the door of the
dilapidated microwave to get his coffee that much sooner, and researchers at a
radio telescope jump at the notion of extra-galactic radio signals.

This was some great detective work, of course one always needs to check if
you're getting events that occur more frequently during working hours.

~~~
fapjacks
As a radio and electronics hobbyist, what's most impressive to me is the
sensitivity of our scientific instruments. Fascinating!

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imglorp
The oven guys selected 2.4 GHz because of water's inherent properties at that
frequency.

Not to make light of it, but any ET would have made the same choice for his
oven.

~~~
drmpeg
That's incorrect. The resonant frequency of water is in the THz range. The
selection of 2.4 GHz is due to frequency allocation. The Industrial, Science
and Medical (ISM) band is centered on 2.45 GHz. There are also microwave ovens
that operate on the next ISM band down in frequency, 915 MHz.

~~~
cnvogel
There's not _THE_ resonant frequency of water, there are a lot of them, in
different regions of the spectrum, and with different widths, all caused by
different mechanism by which water-molecules can interact with electromagnetic
waves.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_absorption_by_w...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_absorption_by_water)

And the one responsible for absorption in the ~1GHz region isn't even related
to any resonance whatsoever, as it's caused by rearrangements of the unordered
electrostatic bindings between the polarized water molecules.

There's even more detail at:
[http://www1.lsbu.ac.uk/water/microwave_water.html](http://www1.lsbu.ac.uk/water/microwave_water.html)

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fapjacks
Hot pockets! There's just something about these kinds of investigations that
really absorb me. For all the other things going on in the world, I'm glad
there seem to be many people interested in this kind of work.

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cozzyd
I'm just gonna make some popcorn and watch...

