Josh Clark

Mm-hmm.

And by 1954, the National Science Foundation started exploring, like, how to just take radio astronomy to the next level, which is, I guess you would say, the second level because it was still so new.

They created the Advisory Panel on Radio Astronomy.

And part of what they were discussing was how to create a quiet zone and where you would make one of those things.

Yeah.

Everybody was really jazzed about this new radio astronomy stuff, right?

Yeah.

West Virginia was very flattered and the state legislature passed the West Virginia Radio Astronomy Zone.

So the first thing that was created was the National Radio Quiet Zone.

And that was actually created before the National Radio Quiet Zone.

Yeah, they laid a 10-mile diameter groundwork around wherever this telescope was going to be built.

They said wherever you put it, there's going to be 10 miles around it where you can't use radio stuff, right?

Yeah.

And then the FCC said, we're going to do one better.

We're going to put another blanket layer, much larger layer,

called the National Radio Quiet Zone, on top of the West Virginia Radio Astronomy Zone to kind of make this huge buffer, right, to make it even harder for radio signals to mess with the radio telescopes in the West Virginia Radio Astronomy Zone.

Yeah, at the Green Bank Observatory, you can't even think about using any kind of radio-creating device because that would create radio waves.

Yeah.

Fire it if you're lucky.

I mean, they'll really work you over there.