I took a ride on a moving radio telescope
3,774,975
Published 2023-01-23
Edited by Michelle Martin twitter.com/mrsmmartin
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All Comments (21)
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And now, a blatant plug for the podcast I host, Lateral! Episodes with William Osman, Simone Giertz, Devin "Legal Eagle" Stone, and loads more people are over at lateralcast.com/ - and there are highlights at youtube.com/lateralcast !
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The part about the energy in the feather hitting the floor being larger than that collected by all radio telescopes ever was genuinely mind blowing.
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John is a very enthusiastic and informative guide, and you can tell he absolutely loves his job. It's always so amazing to see such passionate people sharing what they love, and Tom's sheer indulgence in it is infectious. Another banger!
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Can we all just take a moment to appreciate how good of a guide John is? Presenting technical (and quite elaborate) information in an easy to understand manner, coupled with little quirks and bits of trivia about the facility without skipping a beat. I assume he has done this many times, but wow! A round of applause!
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A few months ago my brother did an internship here, and when he came back the number 1 thing he talked about was how great John was and how cool it was to go out onto the dish. Honestly, I’m kinda jealous of him, what an amazing experience.
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The idea that they can use the telescope itself as a giant crane is ingenious.
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This is unreal, the scale of technology never fails to amaze me! Thank you for showcasing this!
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I’ve worked on a couple of programs about the dish, in 1984 and 2000, and apart from being able to crawl all over the structure etc, the most memorable part for me was chatting with the astrophysicists working there over dinner. Their descriptions of deep space etc blew my mind.
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Man, i can listen to John explaining stuff about radars and dishes all day long and it will never get boring or hard to understand. The guy has A TON of charisma and you can sense that this is not only a job for him, it's a passion. Amazing bloke.
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the fact a feather hitting the floor is more energy than has even been collected from the stars is mind blowing to me, it's crazy how amazing technology is
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Tom as a seventy year old Australian I have to say I am very jealous. I have seen the dish from a distance but not up close and personal. Given the number of pieces you have produced featuring heights I find your continued apparent discomfort rather interesting. Please keep producing this material. I really enjoy your work.
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I was incredibly lucky to walk on The Dish about 25 years ago at an Astronomy open day. It absolutely blew my mind as a young kid. This brought back some memories! Cracking video Tom
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This feels so nostalgic to watch as I remember going to the Dish for work experience in school with John. Got to use the telescope to collect some data from a neutron star. I recommend people to visit it.
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John is the perfect guide. His enthusiasm and the way he brings science to life in such an accessible way is amazing. Fantastic
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I swear, Tom, the best thing you and your team does is find passionate experts on fascinating topics and simply let them shine.
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I know it’s a small thing, but as a retrocomputing enthusiast seeing a mighty PDP-11 from DEC still “on duty” made my heart pump a tiny bit faster ❤
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His explanation of how a phone on the moon would be the brightest signal really puts into perspective how much data SIGINT planes can capture
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“The amount of energy the feather expended when it struck the floor is more energy than has ever been collected by every radio telescope ever” what a mind boggling comparison!
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Can we take a moment to appreciate the camera operator here, who not only kept tom perfectly in frame whilst descending a moving dish, but also kept the shot level whilst doing that, without a horizon!
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I LOVE this telescope so much! For my 40th birthday in 1999, my 2 daughters asked "Dad, what's THE most important place you want to visit?" - So... here we went! ...Also, "The Dish" (by director Rob Sitch) is perhaps THE most gentle, kind, quirky, fun, and lovely little movie ever made♥♥♥
