Digital Upgrades for a Radio Astronomy Revolution

From Scientific American:

Bell Telephone Laboratories engineer Karl Guthe Jansky was only looking for ways to cut down on shortwave radio static when he found radio waves coming from outer space in 1932. Yet Jansky's serendipitous discovery soon gave birth to radio astronomy, which has since delivered paradigm-shifting revelations ranging from the cosmic microwave background to the presence of dark matter in the universe. That science is now on the verge of a 21st-century renaissance that promises even greater discoveries, ushered in not by traditional huge radio dishes but by vast, powerful arrays of smaller dishes.

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