Tracked and
timed by radio telescopes, rapidly spinning pulsars can themselves be transformed into galaxy - spanning detectors sensitive to spacetime ripples with wavelengths measured in light - years.
Accurate and up to the minute data on the interaction between space weather and electron density is vital to maintain services that utilise radio signals — everything from the Global Position System (GPS) used in smart phones, aircraft navigational systems through to the astronomical signals
received by radio telescopes.
This radiation can not be measured
by radio telescopes on Earth because we produce a lot of it ourselves at the same frequencies, and because our atmosphere absorbs it.
Even better, blue or red shifts could be measured for the large clouds of hydrogen gas detected across the Milky
Way by radio telescopes.
The jet
seen by the radio telescopes is not aligned as the scientists expected, and this misalignment may require changes to theoretical models of active galactic nuclei.
Incredibly, the only substantial damage
sustained by the radio telescope's suspended, 900 - ton receiver platform, which sits 150 meters above the 305 - meter dish, was the loss of the catwalk floor and the 430 MHz line feed; the five - ton line feed also smashed a few dozen of the dish's 38,000 panels in its fall.
But if astronomers knew the rate at which hydronium converts to water, then they could estimate the amount of water in the clouds by measuring hydronium, which can be
detected by radio telescopes.
By the time the radio waves are picked up
by the radio telescopes, however, the signal is extremely weak.