Freeing the airwaves... Hmmm... (And other geekery)

OK, time for me to get a little geeky today, I'm afraid, and have a head-desk moment about "Free the Airwaves". Simply put, this is a campaign to get the FCC to allow unlicensed use of "white space" in-between tv broadcast channels, i.e. at frequencies between 54 and 700 MHz, and indeed, once the digital switch-over happens, to allow unrestricted use of frequencies in this band, particularly for things like mobile broadband. Which all sounds great and peachy and "oooh we can open the internet up to more people and make it easier for people etc. etc.". Unless you're a low-frequency radio astronomer. Probably working with the VLA (or indeed the GMRT, but as that's in India, its not 100% relevant!), at frequencies in the 330 MHz and 75 MHz ranges where radio interference from TV and mobile phones is already pretty bad...

Now, ok, radio astronomy's not like finding a cure for cancer or something like that, but it is an interesting and important tool in furthering our understanding of the universe, how the universe evolves, how galaxies interact with and shape their environments, and provides a window on the universe that shows a truly amazing richness of beautiful phenomena, and has allowed tests of relativity, and deepened our understanding of the universe. And low frequency radio astronomy has been instrumental in telling us about the history of interactions between galaxies and their environments, helping us to further understand the evolution of these environments and ultimately our universe. I don't know about you, but I find this fascinating (well, I'd have to really, wouldn't I, else why would I do it?).

But, its difficult. Really difficult. Mainly because of all the man-made radio frequency interference there is at these frequencies. The signal we're looking for can be at least thousands of times fainter than the interferences, and we end up having to bin loads of data to get rid of contaminated channels. Which means our sensitivity is reduced and observing time and money (a limited resource) is wasted. And the faint signals we're looking for become even harder to find. And so science gets even more difficult, and more obstacle strewn than it already is. :-(

I'm sure that there'll be "protected" bands where devices won't be allowed to broadcast, but in reality there'll still be large amounts of leakage into these protected bands which will contaminate observations and make science that little bit harder. *sigh* Anyone fancy a trip to the far side of the moon with a radio telescope array? ;-)

And in other geekery, I've had to fix my MacBook Pro with a bit of post-it note and sellotape. Yep folks, a €2000 computer fixed with office stationery. What was wrong with it? Well, the keyboard and trackpad would just stop working randomly, for no rhyme or reason. Sometimes it'd come back, sometimes it wouldn't. I was confused as hell. So I Gooogled. And Googled some more. And it turns out that there's a known problem of a bowed ribbon cable that connects the keyboard/trackpad to everything else. Applying pressure on the ribbon cable makes everything work fine again, so, 10 minutes later, with a bit of post-it note folded over a few times to apply sufficient pressure sellotaped into place, everything works fine again. And touch wood, there won't be any more problems. I swear I'm cursed with laptops or something!