For nearly 17 years astronomers at Parkes Observatory in Australia searched for the reason why radio interference took place during experiments and observations. They discovered early this year that the interference was coming from a microwave oven in the observatory’s kitchen.
Parkes Observatory houses one of the best-known radio telescopes in the country. It is used to measure radio signals for signs of extraterrestrial life.
Astronomers thought the interference, which began in 1988, was due to lightning strikes.
“The radio signals, called perytons, were reasonably local, say within 5km of the telescope and appeared only once or twice a year. They were believed to be from lightning strikes. That changed when a new receiver installed at the site measured radio signals at 2.4 GHz, the same frequency as a microwave oven,” Simon Johnston, head of astrophysics at the CSIRO, told The Guardian.
The scientists opened the door to the microwave before it finished heating food and pinpointed it was the cause of interference.
“If you set it to heat and pull it open to have a look, it generates interference,” Johnston said.
This discovery was published in a scientific paper.
Mukesh Patel says
This simply means that the microwave oven was not safety compliant. Because there is supposed to be an interlock that turns off the microwave generation when the door is opened. I wonder what brand of the oven caused these problems.
Andy says
Astronomers are weird guys. Handling cryo-cooled microwave LNAs and not taking simple precautions… I remember when I had a strange “fractal noise” at 80-90 kHz during experiments with non-linear media… The culprit, an old CRT monitor, was exposed the next morning. There was another problem, that monitor should have been turned on during measurements 🙂
Jerry Brown says
The interference isn’t caused by a faulty safety interlock. Lots of rf is generated when the magnetron in the microwave is turned off at the instant the door is opened. I once worked on a crockpot controller which had a strange habit of turning itself on when I opened the door of a nearby microwave. It was so consistent that I used the microwave to troubleshoot the problem.