Tuning in to Radio Santa as he travels the world
Every child wants to catch a glimpse of Santa on his rounds on Christmas Eve. But, if there are clouds in the sky, how can we see the sleigh?
Just as happened with the recent Supermoon and Perseid meteor shower, pesky clouds can stop us seeing things high in the Earth’s atmosphere, even with a regular telescope.
But there could be another way, explains astrophysicist Professor Turlough Downes from DCU’s School of Mathematical Sciences, and it uses radio waves instead.
“To get to every house on the planet, Santa and the reindeer need to move extremely quickly,” he says. “Moving that quickly creates heat and pressure in the Earth’s atmosphere, and we can detect that using radio waves.”
We make use of radio waves to listen to our favourite programmes on the radio, but they are also known to scientists as particular forms or ‘wavelengths’ of energy that can travel through space. And, unlike the light we see with our eyes, they don’t get blocked by clouds.
“Around the world, radio telescopes are on alert for radio waves coming from much further away in space – radio waves can travel extremely long distances – because these waves of energy can tell us about events that have happened, such as the births and deaths of stars,” explains Professor Downes.
“In Ireland, a new radio telescope called the Irish Low Frequency Array is being built in Birr, and scientists [in Ireland] are also using radio signals from other telescope arrays around the word to help us figure out what happens in space.”
In the newly formed Centre for Astrophysics and Relativity in DCU, Professor Downes uses information from radio waves as one type of signal to figure out how planets form in faraway star systems, and Dr John Regan looks at how supermassive black holes could form - radio waves are an important part in his understanding of that process.
“But back to Santa,” says Professor Downes. “Isn’t it good to know that even if we can’t see him moving on Christmas Eve, we can still detect the magic with science!”