THE WONDERS OF RADIO ASTRONOMY

What can be learnt from radio astronomy that isn’t revealed in other spectrums of light?

Until about 400 years ago, we were, as human beings, completely blinkered. We didn’t have telescopes. We just had our own eyes and we just had the eyes that have evolved over millions of years of animal evolution on planet Earth. For that reason we can only see a tiny, narrow part of the spectrum. It was only much more recently that we started taking off the blinkers, certainly in the early 20th century. We started to realise there were other types of light that we could gather. And one of those invisible colours is radio waves.

We started to use those radio waves, not just for communication, but to passively receive information from space. Radio waves let you see the invisible. And they also let you find out so many layers of colours that we can’t see. For example, in the middle of our galaxy – the Milky Way – there’s so much dense, dusty gas that is completely black. All of that is hidden from view until we use infrared radiation, or if we use radio waves, and that’s what those different colours can teach