When the Navy Imposed Radio Silence to Listen to Mars #SpaceSaturday
In 1924 the U.S. Navy imposed nationwide radio silence for five minutes so that they could listen to Mars. As much as this sounds like something Orson Welles orchestrated, this is a real thing that happened. Here’s more on the five minutes Ameriuca went silent and cupped its ear in hopes of hearing martian whispers, from Centauri Dreams:
[The event] occurred in 1924, when at another Martian opposition (an orbital alignment bringing Earth and Mars as close as they’ll get during its 26-month orbit), the U. S. Navy imposed radio silence nationwide for five minutes once an hour from August 21 to 24. The plan: Allow observatories worldwide to listen for Martians.
This was serious SETI for its day. A dirigible was launched from the U. S. Naval Observatory carrying radio equipment for these observations, with the capability of relaying its signals back to a laboratory on the ground. A military cryptographer was brought in to monitor the situation, as attested by a provocative New York Times headline from August 23 of that year: “Code Expert Ready for Message.; RADIO HEARS THINGS AS MARS NEARS US.”
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