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Science File Information:
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This episode begins with Agent Mulder's brief history of the Voyager project.
Voyager I and II (Voyager II actually launched first) are a pair of NASA space
probes launched in 1977 to study the solar system and the galaxy beyond. Having
finished their study of the planets around our sun in 1989, the two probes have
continued to travel beyond the reaches of our galaxy, sending back periodic data
transmissions and carrying a
universal message
(referred to in the episode) intended for any alien life the probes might
encounter.
Everything you ever wanted to know about the Voyager probes awaits you at NASA's
Voyager page: http://vraptor.jpl.nasa.gov/.
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As the episode opens, the X-Files have been shut down. Scully's teaching
autopsies to to queasy medical students, while Mulder's job is to listen to
FBI wiretaps of two-bit thugs discussing the finer points of lap
dancing.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center
has a page chock full of wiretapping info, including the results of recent
Congressional votes, at
http://www.epic.org/privacy/wiretap/.
A Massachusetts security firm's "Wiretapping 101" page points out the
myriad and easy ways someone can listen in on your phone conversations:
http://www.tscm.com/outsideplant.html.
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Mulder and Scully meet clandestinely in the parking lot of the Watergate
Hotel to discuss the closing of the X-Files. Mulder mentions the famed
Palomar observatory in San Diego, California, and how its founder George
Ellery Hale claimed an elf climbed in his window and gave him the idea for
the telescope.
The 200-inch Hale Telescope, in service since 1948, remains one of the
largest on Earth. Learn more about the telescope's convoluted history and
the observatory itself at
http://astro.caltech.edu/observatories/palomar/public/.
No mention of helpful elves, but this German page (in English) has links to
all sorts of George Ellery Hale information throughout the Web:
http://www.astro.uni-bonn.de/~pbrosche/persons/pers_hale_ge.html.
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Senator Richard Matheson calls upon Mulder to visit the Arecibo
Observatory near San Juan, Puerto Rico. Although the episode says it's been
closed down by Nevada Senator
Richard Bryan, the radio telescope at Arecibo -- also seen in the movie
Contact-- still scans the skies for signs of intelligent life as part of
the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project.
Learn more about the Arecibo Observatory, now run by Cornell
University, at its official site:
http://www.naic.edu/.
Radio astronomy works by gathering radio waves from outer space rather than
visible light. For more info, check out the
National Radio Astronomy Observatory's page
of basic facts at
http://www.nrao.edu/intro/.
SETI lost its government funding after the Republicans won Congress in
1994, but it survives as a private institute, funded by some of the biggest
names in the computer industry. See for yourself, and download the
SETI-At-Home screen saver,
at http://www.seti.org.
Matheson mentions the "high-resolution microwave survey," which scans the
microwave end of the electromagnetic specturum for signals from life-bearing
planets. For more info, see
http://www.seti-inst.edu/searches/hrms-desc.html.
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Mulder heads off to Puerto Rico, leaving a very puzzled Scully wondering
about his whereabouts. She goes to search his apartment,where she recovers
a printout of the data from Arecibo given him by Senator Matheson. When a
fellow FBI agent analyzes the results, he says it's similar to a "Wow
signal" discovered by his colleague Jerry Ehman at Ohio State in 1977. The
"Wow signal" was supposedly 30 times stronger than the cosmic background
radiation, the radiation "noise" floating around in space as remnants of
the Big Bang.
You'll find more about this "interstellar static" at
http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/html/cbr.html.
Read an article about the "Wow signal" and its discoverer Jerry Ehman at
http://www.bigear.org/wow.htm.
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Down in Puerto Rico, Mulder has a close encounter with a freaked-out
local, some mysterious out-of-this-world intruders, and a gun-toting
commando squad. He and Scully narrowly escape, with only a single reel of
data tape from the Arecibo computers as evidence. In the end, though, that
single reel turns out to be blank. Scully suggests that the previous
night's lightning storm may have created a magnetic field that degaussed
the tapes. Degaussing erases magnetically encoded data by subjecting it to
magnetic fields of alternating polarity until the original magnetic data is
completely obliterated.
A British company that specializes in degaussing has a FAQ at
http://www.weircliffe.co.uk/degaussi.htm.
The Mad Scientists' Network has a post on
the effects of lightning strikes on nearby electronics at http://madsci.wustl.edu/posts/archives/dec97/ 879367603.Es.r.html.
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