Why the Radio Telescope’s Silent Hour Was More Than Static

A small university radio telescope dish stands beside a modest control shed at dusk.

During a routine calibration at a small university radio telescope, students noticed a one-hour stretch where the receiver showed less noise than the equipment should allow. The anomaly repeated, but only on certain nights. Stranger still, a nearby analog tape recorder caught faint counting-like interference the telescope itself could not hear during the same unsettling windows. Read more