Originally posted by jdbaxter
In regards to Tom Bedlam's statements regarding acoustics and radio waves...ACOUSTO-OPTICS sounds right, what do you think Tom? You think Harvard
puts out misinformation?
Probably not intentionally, but in this case, the problem is that you didn't have a clue what you were reading and leaped to a bad conclusion.
I see this a lot in CT and free energy enthusiasts - you want to conflate something you believe with published scientific studies, so you start
googling for keywords, and when you hit something that
looks like what you want, you decide you've vindicated your viewpoint without looking
any further.
What you're seeing here is the term "acousto-optical receiver" and thinking that it somehow allows the radio telescope to receive audio - something
you wouldn't have considered had you actually had any general science, so let's start there.
Sound is caused by pressure waves in a material medium. This means that along the path of propagation of sound, you get higher and lower densities
caused by the pressure wave propagating through. Sound is mechanical.
A propagating radio wave is electromagnetic in nature, and is generated by an oscillating E-field and an oscillating H-field at right angles to each
other. It is transverse. It is not mechanical in nature. You cannot hear it.
Since sound is mechanical in nature, and is longitudinal, and radio is electromagnetic in nature, and is transverse, you can't receive sounds with a
radio, nor can you hear radio with your ears. They are not related. They have nothing physically in common.
This isn't a bad explanation of sound, and it has pictures, which may help.
It's harder to find a good simple EM wave page, probably because it's not that simple.
Anyway, sound and EM are not the same. Period. Radio receivers can't receive sound.
Now, what does "acousto-optical receiver" mean? Wow, that's a lot tougher to explain, given that you don't know the difference between sound and
radio, or even accept that they ARE different. Acousto-optic receivers are pretty darned technical, and it's going to be really rough to explain it
in simple terms. There are a number of functions that you can do with an acousto-optic cell.
What THEY'RE doing with it is a Fourier transform, which bins out the frequency and amplitude components of the signal. So over their signal slice,
they're using an acousto-optic Fourier transform to "channelize" the microwave data they're receiving.
You use AO cells a lot in electronic warfare to analyze radar signal returns.
It has nothing whatsoever to do with "receiving audio with an antenna".
Originally posted by zerbot565
could this be HAARP or a ssimular device ?
No.