The bricks of life’s chemistry exist beyond Earth and its Solar System. The GBT discovered simple sugars and the precursors to nucleic acids - both needed to make DNA - in the cold clouds near the center of our Galaxy. Currently, the GBT is the only large telescope that fits those specification, which is why it leads all others in the discoveries of life’s critical molecules out in space. Seeing the often-faint signals of the complex molecules needed for the chemistry of life requires a sensitive telescope observing in high radio frequencies. The GBT observes these city-sized snowballs before, during, and after their trips around the Sun to learn about their temperatures and chemistry. As their secrets boil out into space, comets reveal to us the building blocks of the early Solar System, the water and organics that seeded the Earth with the chemicals of life. Byrd Green Bank Telescope Chemistry of Green Bank TelescopeĬomets brighten if they swing in toward the Sun, because the Sun heats and blasts their icy surfaces. Hydrogen is the Lego of the Universe, so studies of where it gathers, what’s happening inside those cloudy gatherings, and where those clouds are heading are crucial clues to piecing together the history and future of our Galaxy and others. In radio astronomy, this means the GBT is super-sensitive to the super-faint clouds of hydrogen that hang out between the stars and galaxies. The giant 2.3-acre dish surface of the green bank telescope is an enormous bucket for scooping up the weak radio waves that rain down on us from objects in space. The competition is high, because this telescope is the best of its kind in the world. More than 900 different scientists have used the GBT in the last five years, and there is only a one-in-four chance that a scientist’s research proposal will be chosen. The National Science Foundation’s Green Bank Telescope will join in the search for intelligent life in the Universe as part of the Breakthrough Listen endeavor. The Green Bank Telescope can be used to do chemistry, physics, radar receiving, and astronomy and has no equal in the world. Its suite of receivers covers 100 MHz to 100 GHz in frequencies, its processors can spot nanosecond timing differences in data, and it observes under radio-quiet skies. Scientists come from around the world to use the Green Bank Telescope, because it is the most accurate, versatile, large dish radio telescope in the world.
Visit the Green Bank Observatory website to learn more!
As of October 2016 it is now operated by the independent Green Bank Observatory. The Green Bank Telescope was designed and built by NRAO, beginning observations in 2000.
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