Thursday, June 09, 2005

Astronomers don’t want the in-flight cellphone ban lifted

Peter Rojas posts over on Engadget:

It’s not just flight attendants and federales worried about terrorism who are coming out against lifting the ban on using cellphones on airplanes, now it’s the astronomers who are unhappy (and you so do not want to be on their bad side). Cellphones just happen to leak radiation at an integer that coincides with the molecular signature of newborn and dying stars, and the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Radio Frequencies has complained to the FCC that even a single cellphone in the air is enough to seriously interfere with a radio telescope. Except when it’s a cellphone that’s connected to one of those in-plane picocell mini base stations that relays the signal to the ground at a frequency that doesn’t interfere with their telescopes. They don’t mind that.

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