The United States National Radio Quiet Zone (NRQZ) is a 13,000 square-mile rectangle covering the southernmost tip of Maryland’s western panhandle, the Allegheny Mountains in Eastern West Virginia, and the Blue Ridge Mountains in Central Virginia. The area exists to protect key government installations deep in the heart of the NRQZ from radio interference, including the Green Bank Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia. The most severe restrictions exist within a 20-mile radius of the observatory and involve limitations on Wi-Fi and cellular service, and the prohibition of all but diesel-powered vehicles when approaching the observatory itself.
The world’s largest fully steerable radio telescope, the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope, operates at Green Bank and requires radio silence for its work. The telescope has found everything from a trio of millisecond pulsars from Messier 62 to the most massive neutron star yet discovered, PSR J0740+6620. Such findings are only possible due to the extreme sensitivity this and the other three radio telescopes at the observatory possess. But the drawbacks of these highly sensitive instruments are their ability to detect any radio transmission–from digital cameras, smartphones, or even the spark plugs of gasoline-powered vehicles. Thus, the restrictions imposed.
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