Listening to Space

Check out the details on this meteor shower - you should be able to see it Wednesday and Thursday morning of this week if you get out before dawn. Meteors are actually very close to us - what you're seeing is space rocks burning up in the atmosphere. I talked about meteors last year so check that out if you want to know more.

We understand a lot of the items in our Solar System, but how much do we know about the whole Milky Way? The answer is....not a lot.

 

And this is just the Milky Way - one galaxy amongst 100 billion.

 Finding out about deep space requires very specific instruments, dialed in to the tiny differences between different patches of the sky. Because of these precise frequency measurements, astronomers are trying to prevent lawn-mowing Roombas (robots) from using that area of the FM spectrum. FM as in your radio - when you tune to a FM radio station, you're actually matching up to that size radio wave. When you're hearing static, 1% of that static is left over FROM THE BIG BANG 13.1 billion years ago.

Not that one. This one!

When astronomers want to study that background radiation, they need the rest of the spectrum to be clear so there's no interference. When it was first discovered, scientists were trying everything to calibrate an antenna to study deep space but they just couldn't get rid of a static. They eventually discovered that the real source was radiation left over from the Big Bang. See more here if you're curious!

If you want to literally listen to space, some scientists have converted the electromagnetic waves from different areas into sound - check that out here.