Radio Astronomy and Radio Telescopes, History of
During the second half of the nineteenth century, the electromagnetic theories of James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) and the experiments of Heinrich Hertz (1857–1894) permitted scientists to consider the possibility of an emission of radio waves by the stars or the Sun. According to the German physicist Hermann Ebert (1861–1913) in 1892, the observation of electric discharges in vacuum tubes were conducted to investigate the possible existence of Hertzian (radio) waves emitted by the Sun. Admitting the validity of Maxwell’s theory, the French physicist Charles Nordmann (1881–1940) was convinced that high-altitude observations might succeed in detecting those solar radio waves. But despite using a 175-m antenna placed almost at the top of Mont Blanc, he detected no waves because of a lack of sensitivity.
The detection of “cosmic static”, i.e., radio waves of extraterrestrial origin, was made for the first time by the American radio engineer Karl Guthe Jansky (1905–1950) in 1932....
KeywordsAtacama Large Array Millimeter (ALMA) Cosmic background radiation Interstellar chemistry Interstellar medium Molecules in space Radio astronomy Radio telescope Very large base interferometry
References and Further Reading
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