| updated | 2021-08-09 04:31:04 -0600 |
|---|
I have trouble wrapping my head around the scale of the radio energy that has become an essential utility in domestic life.
I have had discussions with my kids, and with college students. They seem to be in general agreement: they could go without electricity for as long as their battery held out on their phone, then maybe laptop... but they would feel something seriously immediately wrong and in need of attention if they lost a connection to the internet.
[[Basic needs for survival]] are unequivocal. I might be surprised at how quickly things seem broken when the net access is down!
So yeah, we are squawking on the radio, all the time.
[[How Many]] radios do you use every day?
Let’s say that the total area of all radio telescopes is about half of a square kilometer. https://1drv.ms/x/s!Am3-VK1imaDit7EPQZdMYFtQvp8EhQ Karl Jansky first detected a stellar radio source Cassiopeia A in August 1931. Cassiopeia A observations are typically 3000 Jy. Let’s create an alternate history, in which each radio telescope ever built continuously observed this radio source, until it fell apart or until the present day … Total received energy from August 1931 to now would be less than the amount of mechanical energy it would take to type this paragraph on a typical mechanical keyboard!