A lot has been written about the National Radio Quiet Zone.
The United States National Radio Quiet Zone is a large area of land centered between the National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green Bank, West Virginia and the Sugar Grove Research Facility at Sugar Grove, West Virginia. The Radio Quiet Zone is a rectangle of land approximately 13,000 square miles (34,000 km2) in size that straddles the border area of Virginia and West Virginia. It includes all land with latitudes between 37° 30′ 0.4″ N and 39° 15′ 0.4″ N and longitudes between 78° 29′ 59.0″ W and 80° 29′ 59.2″ W.
Inside the quiet zone, you can’t use a cell phone, can’t use microwave oven. No wireless internet. Nothing that generates radio waves that might interfere with the giant radio telescopes at Green Bank and Sugar Grove.
I found this video charming, especially the part that describes visitors trying to deal with the fact that they can’t use their iPads and iPhones.
I want to go to there.
Sounds like a great place to live. And I love observatories.
Except you CAN do all those things in it.
The restrictions are all actually on high-power omnidirectional transmissions, and especially right by the radio telescopes.
The idea that WiFi is banned there is entirely without actual evidence – though the little clusters of radiophobes who’ve moved there because of the hype presumably don’t use WiFi.
(And microwave ovens? They’re so effectively shielded that they can barely interfere with local WiFi networking! They’re not going to be a problem for the radio telescopes, especially since microwave is comparatively short-range.)
Cell service is likewise not banned, except again perhaps in the 10/20 mile zone right near the telescopes.
A simple look at cell provider coverage maps for the cities in the Zone proves that; every city listed as in the Zone in the Wikipedia article has full cell coverage, and typically LTE, from a quick check against AT+T’s map.
There’s a comparatively large coverage gap in the core of the zone – but equally not that much larger than other mountainous low-traffic areas in the Allegheny Mountains.
In other words, that video is not about “the Quiet Zone” as a whole, but the pseudo-town of Green Bank, which is right by one of the telescopes.
Most of the Zone has no restrictions anyone would ever notice, and I’m not at all sure I trust it on “microwave ovens are banned in Green Bank”, rather than “the three-dozen radiophobes that moved there won’t use them”…