Final - August 28, 2002 - Green Bank Observatory



Catching the Waves of the Radio Universe

Script

|VIDEO |AUDIO |

|OPEN ANIMATION…FADES TO CAMPING SCENE |(MUSIC THAT REFLECTS THE WONDERMENT OF THE UNIVERSE) |

|COMPUTER ENHANCED VIEW OF NIGHT SKY. INTERCUT WITH FAMILY VIEWING |Title: The Green Bank Telescope: Catching the Waves of the Radio Universe |

|HEAVENS THROUGH TELESCOPE. | |

|THE FATHER POINTS TO/DESCRIBES VARIOUS CONSTELLATIONS as the children|(MUSIC UNDER DIALOGUE) |

|LOOK through a telescope. |Father: …”That faint band of light is the Milky Way. Running right along it is a |

| |pattern of stars that form a cross. That’s Cygnus the Swan. The head of the swan is|

| |a star called Albireo, and the tail is Deneb. See if you can find Albireowith the |

| |telescope, Jason.” |

| | |

| | |

| |(MUSIC UP FULL, THEN UNDER NARRATION) |

|THE FATHER CONTINUES EXPLAINING AS KIDS LOOK THROUGH TELESCOPE. |Narrator: The night sky makes us wonder about the universe and our role in it as |

| |human beings – how were stars and planets created? How old is the universe? Is there|

| |life beyond our solar system? |

| |Astronomers from all over the world use the Green Bank Telescope to find some |

| |answers. |

|CUT TO GBT |While optical telescopes give us an enhanced view of the visible universe, radio |

| |telescopes provide a deeper look at the cosmos. |

|SHOW gbt MOVING |Telescopes at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory capture and measure radio |

|Fade to “What are Radio Waves” Graphic |waves that are invisible to the human eye. |

|FADE TO ANIMATION – MONTAGE OF images of OBJECTS , FAMILIAR AND |All matter generates electromagnetic energy. Cosmic objects like planets and stars |

|ASTRONOMICAL - at different wavelengths |radiate energy across the electromagnetic spectrum. A tiny sliver of this energy |

| |is in the form of visible light, the colors from violet to red. Still other forms |

| |of energy exist, and differ only in their wavelength |

|ANIMATION OF ELECTROMAGNETIC SPECTRUM ADD ALL TYPES OF FREQUENCIES TO|Honey bees , using ultraviolet vision, see an inviting target in this flower. |

|ANIMATION |Light that is redder than red is called infrared. We feel its energy as heat. Much |

| |redder than infrared are the radio waves. |

| | |

|Show receivers at the top of telescope, computer equipment. |While you can’t “see” anything through a radio telescope, sensitive receivers and |

| |computers can. The goals of radio astronomy are similar to optical astronomy – to |

|Show series of images beginning with radio image of planets, the sun,|study the characteristics of objects emitting electromagnetic energy. Planets…, |

|supernova remnants, to radio galaxies. (high res images from the NRAO|exploded stars…,clouds of gas… and distant galaxies all emit radio waves. |

|image gallery web page) | |

|ANIMATION OF EM WAVES HITTING RADIO TELESCOPE DISH AND BEING DIRECTED|Radio telescopes may not look like other telescopes, but they are similar. The |

|TO FOCAL MIRROR…. THEN TO RECEIVER |large bowl shaped dish is a mirror to radio waves. Radio waves reflect from the dish|

| |surface to a focus where the radio astronomer places a sensitive radio receiver, |

|show picture of receiver room. |instead of a camera. |

|TRANSITION HERE |Like this neon sign which glows a characteristic red, molecules glow in specific |

|A neon sign flickers bright red. |radio “colors” or wavelengths. By tuning a radio telescope to the right wavelength,|

|animation of atoms and molecules emit certain wavelengths? |astronomers can probe the chemistry of the Milky Way and other regions of the |

| |universe. |

|Images of the Milky Way |ASTRONOMER (JIM DICKEY) |

| |00:00:37:19 “We are mapping the Milky Way galaxy using the spectral line of |

| |hydrogen. With radio waves we can tell what things are made of, but in different |

| |spectral lines. Hydrogen is one of the most common atoms in the universe, it is |

| |simplest atoms and it has a spectral line with a wavelength of 21 centimeters. |

| |That's about that long, a typical radio wavelength.” |

|Beautiful spiral galaxy. |Narration: Mapping the hydrogen in the Milky Way has led astronomers to conclude |

|Show where we live. |that we live in a spiral galaxy, out in the galactic “suburbs” on a spiral arm. |

|GIANT MOLECULAR CLOUD IN ORION OR THE EAGLE NEBULA |Radio astronomers have also peered into dark clouds where new stars are being |

| |formed. They have discovered that these clouds contain chemicals similar to those on|

|zoom into the dark area of the image. |earth. |

|CHRIS DEPREE |DEPREE: “One of the things I study is star formation in the galaxy and the regions |

|SUPER: NAME/TITLE |that I like to look at are regions that are deep inside molecular clouds. These |

| |regions are completely obscured optically. So if you were to point to an optical |

|OPTICAL IMAGES OF MOLECULAR CLOUDS |telescope at some of these regions, you would just see blank sky. You wouldn't see |

| |anything at all, where as a radio telescope will see deep down into those clouds |

|RADIO IMAGES OF MOLECULAR CLOUDS |because the radio waves don’t get absorbed by the gas in the same way the optical |

| |waves do. So you can see regions of space, you can see regions of the galaxy that |

| |you can’t see with an optical telescope.” |

| | |

|FADE TO “THE GREEN BANK TELESCOPE” GRAPHIC |MUSIC UNDER |

|GBT moving around |Narrator: Radio telescopes like the one at Green Bank, West Virginia, enable |

| |astronomers to cut through almost 30,000 light years of obscuring dust and observe |

|center of the galaxy |the very heart of our galaxy. They reveal huge clouds of gas moving at tremendous |

| |speeds. |

|parallel universes picture, zoom in, on one and “morph” a high |Much farther in the Universe than our own Milky Way, the Green Bank Telescope |

|resolution image of radio galaxy with jets |reveals some of the brightest radio objects known. The smudges and dots in this view|

| |of the radio sky aren’t the ordinary stars you see at night. Instead, they are |

| |galaxies and quasars; galaxies and quasars one, five, or even 10 billion light years|

| |away. |

| |Detailed images of these powerful galaxies show extensive jets of subatomic |

| |particles spewing tens of thousands of light years into space at nearly the speed of|

|animation of a black hole. |light. Within the cores of radio galaxies and quasars, we suspect the existence of |

| |massive black holes, objects with a gravitational field so strong that not even |

| |light can escape. |

|images of big bang, COBE data |Radio astronomers can peer back to a time, before stars and before galaxies when | |

|see |nothing filled the universe but the hot gases from the Big Bang. A trace of this | |

| |event lingers as a faint radio signal permeating the universe. | |

|TRANSITION HERE |The Green Bank Telescope may remind you of your TV satellite dish. But the GBT is |

| |millions of times more sensitive to incoming radio waves than your home electronics |

|HOME SATELLITE TV DISH |equipment. |

|CLOSE UP OF HAND TUNING RADIO. |(NATSOT OF STATIC) |

|CONTINUE WITH CLOSE OF HAND TUNING RADIO |Narrator: Imagine tuning in a typical radio station 10 miles away. The signal you |

|NASA animation? |receive will be only a few thousands of a watt. But the Green Bank Telescope |

| |detects radio waves from space that are a billion, billion times weaker; weak |

| |because of the vast distances they travel. |

|EXTERIOR OF GREEN BANK TELESCOPE, LOOKING DOWN ON DISH. |Since radio waves from space are such weak signals, astronomers need large, very |

|DISSOLVE TO DOWNWARD VIEW OF BUCKET WITH DROPS POURING INTO IT, THEN |sensitive telescopes like the one at Green Bank to ‘catch the waves.’ Just as a |

|BACK TO DISH. |bigger bucket collects more raindrops, bigger radio telescopes collect more radio |

| |energy and can see farther. |

|SHOT OF MASSIVE GBT DISH |Its 100 by 110-meter, steerable dish has an area of 2.3 acres. That could easily |

|Show imagery on size of dish such as |hold a football field! |

|Mountaineer Football game on dish | |

|GBT | |

| |Weighing in at 17 million pounds and 485 feet tall, the GBT is one of the largest, |

| |moving structures on land |

| | |

|animated graphic of lasers scanning the GBT dish. tHIS WILL COME FROM|Narrator: Despite its size, the Green Bank telescope is incredibly accurate. The |

|pHOTOSYNTHESIS iNC. |telescope can be pointed with an accuracy of 1 arcsecond – that’s like being able to|

| |see the individual pepperoni on a pizza from 3 miles away. |

| | |

| |The telescope is designed to study radio waves ranging from 3 meters in wavelength |

| |to a tiny 3 mm in wavelength. In order to detect these smallest of radio waves, the|

| |surface of the Green Bank Telescope must be perfect. Extremely sensitive lasers scan|

| |the surface and provide data to 2000 motors that position the reflector panels to a |

| |precision of one-tenth of a millimeter. That’s smaller than the period at the end |

| |of a sentence. |

|show this sentence | |

|That’s smaller than the period at the end of a sentence. | |

|FADE TO “LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION” GRAPHIC |MUSIC UNDER |

|ASTRONOMER IN CONTROL ROOM CONTROLLING DISH… |The ability of the GBT to detect extremely faint signals is a blessing and also a |

| |curse. It means that it is sensitive to man-made radio signals as well. |

|…TO DISH TURNING IN NEW DIRECTION | |

|ASTRONOMER IN CONTROL ROOM (Super Name/Title showing data again) |ASTRONOMER (JIM DICKEY): “Interference is a big, big problem in radio astronomy. It|

| |is a terrible problem that is getting worse and worse all the time. Interference is |

| |signals, which come into the telescope, but they don't come from space, they come |

|SHOW COMPUTER SCREEN WITH INTERFERENCE SPIKE |from artificial things like radars. Here's a line for example, right here in my |

| |spectrum, which fortunately is a little bit spaced, but it could have come right on |

| |top of my signal. That line could come from a radar maybe, thousands of miles away |

| |or it could come from somebody's cell phone, or microwave oven in the valley. It |

| |could even come from something like an electric fence or a car engine. |

|CELL PHONE OR MICROWAVE | |

| | |

|CAR ENGINE RUNNING | |

| | |

| | |

|View SURROUNDING GBT… AND UP TO THE RECEIVER, HUNDREDS OF FEET HIGH. |Narrator: Both the design of the GBT and its location in Green Bank help to reduce |

| |interference. The Green Bank Telescope is located in the National Radio Quiet Zone,|

| |a national preserve for radio astronomy. The Quiet Zone and surrounding mountains |

| |protect GBT receivers against most unwanted manmade interference. |

| |(MUSIC UNDER NARRATOR) |

| |Perhaps the most interesting question the human species ever asks is “Are we alone?”|

|TRANSITION |Unable to travel interstellar distances, we have only one tool currently capable of |

| |answering this question: the radio telescope. From Green Bank, astronomer Frank |

|GBT RADIO SIGNALS COMING INTO CONTROL ROOM |Drake conducted the first radio frequency search for a beacon from other |

| |civilizations. |

| |In a way, Earth is also a radio beacon. |

|ANIMATION OF RADIO SIGNALS FROM EARTH WITH FUZZY HISTORICAL |Since Drake began the search for extra terrestrial intelligence, our own radio |

|SOUNDBITES AND IMAGES FROM ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW |signals have been traveling into space at the speed of light. Faint echoes of early|

| |TV shows are now more than 50 light years away. |

|. |SOUNDBITES FROM THE OLD ANDY GRIFFITH SHOWS – “Gee, Paw!” |

|IMAGES SPREAD OUT FARTHER THAN THE 50-YEAR SPHERE, GROWING MORE FAINT|Narrator: If other civilizations are broadcasting signals like we are, radio |

| |telescopes could one day detect an extraterretrial version of “Andy Griffith” |

| | |

|Family at GBT looking raptly up at beautiful telescope |The search continues. |

| |Armed with groundbreaking technology, astronomers at Green Bank continue to make |

| |spectacular discoveries as they gaze ever deeper into space. |

| | |

| |The Green Bank Telescope: reaching new frontiers… from the solar system to the edge |

|DISSOLVE TO Telescope |of the universe. |

|CREDITS/FADE TO BLACK |(MUSIC UP FULL TO END) |

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