Mostly clear this evening. Becoming mostly cloudy with showers developing after midnight. Low around 40F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 50%..
Tonight
Mostly clear this evening. Becoming mostly cloudy with showers developing after midnight. Low around 40F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 50%.
Back in February, we wrote an editorial chastising the National Science Foundation — a federal agency — for threatening to remove support for the Robert C. Byrd telescope at Green Bank by 2017.
The feds provide as much as $10 million a year to keep the operation going at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. But they apparently don’t feel the cost is worth it despite the recent accomplishments by scientists using the big dish.
Now comes some much-needed support by a privately funded project that will mean an annual infusion of $2 million a year for the next decade.
The project is called Breakthrough Listen, in which the dish at Green Bank and another in Australia will search the stars in 100 galaxies for other civilizations that may be out there.
“We are delighted to play such a vital role in hopefully answering one of the most compelling questions in all of science and philosophy: Are we alone in the Universe?” Tony Beasley, director of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, told the Charleston Gazette-Mail.
The project, funded by the Breakthrough Prize Foundation, is endorsed by a number of scientists, including physicist Stephen Hawking. That’s significant star power, if you’ll pardon the pun.
Green Bank has been scanning the heavens for more than half a century. The old dish, which collapsed in 1988, was replaced by the world’s largest, fully steerable 100-meter telescope.
The new dish has proved invaluable to scientists studying the cosmos and it has provided jobs in Pocahontas County and unparalleled prestige for the state of West Virginia.
We were perplexed in February that the NSF would consider pulling its funding for the Green Bank facility. We’re more hopeful now that the Breakthrough Listen program proves that the telescope is well worth the cost.
“This project … shows we’re making major strides to pay our own way,” said Mike Holstine, Green Bank’s director of operations. “I think it’s fairly clear now that the NSF doesn’t want us to go away or to entirely stop funding us.”
We, too, hope the feds now realize the importance of Green Bank, and we hope they make note that it has the respect of some of the world’s most influential stargazers.
Breakthrough Listen gears up in January, and we look forward to the day when Green Bank will play a big role in making contact with other worlds.
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