And now, a blatant plug for the podcast I host, Lateral! Episodes with William Osman, Simone Giertz, Devin "Legal Eagle" Stone, and loads more people are over at lateralcast.com - and there are highlights at jpvid.net/u-lateralcast !
How it doesn't rip of the building is the counterweight. At that angle the the counter weight ensures all force is still downwards. Without a counterweight it would fall off the building because the force would be sideways.
Can we all just take a moment to appreciate how good of a guide John is? Presenting technical (and quite elaborate) information in an easy to understand manner, coupled with little quirks and bits of trivia about the facility without skipping a beat. I assume he has done this many times, but wow! A round of applause!
I love all your stuff, Tom, but this is best video you've done in a long time. The dish is fascinating, John is a great guide, and the fact that you literally WALKED OFF THE TELESCOPE is just amazing. Great episode!
The film John refers to is called ‘The Dish’, and was made in about 2000. It’s a great movie, one of the last Aussie films that showcases Aussie larrikinism and wit. Great video, Tom!
I’ve worked on a couple of programs about the dish, in 1984 and 2000, and apart from being able to crawl all over the structure etc, the most memorable part for me was chatting with the astrophysicists working there over dinner. Their descriptions of deep space etc blew my mind.
There's something about spending time among people with planet-sized brains which simultaneously makes you feel smarter but also makes you feel very basic. :)
John is a very enthusiastic and informative guide, and you can tell he absolutely loves his job. It's always so amazing to see such passionate people sharing what they love, and Tom's sheer indulgence in it is infectious. Another banger!
I was incredibly lucky to walk on The Dish about 25 years ago at an Astronomy open day. It absolutely blew my mind as a young kid. This brought back some memories! Cracking video Tom
This was abbsolutely and incredibly fascinating, all the tech in use and all the details you captured, then explained in laypersons' terms. I was picturing a "full tilted" position and saw the edge 60+ feet up; I did NOT expect the rim to come within a few feet of ground! Thank you for taking us on so many grand adventures, Mr. Scott!
the fact a feather hitting the floor is more energy than has even been collected from the stars is mind blowing to me, it's crazy how amazing technology is
6 日 前
@HaydenHattrick the dude who told tom that is a highly trained professional, as he is the one chosen to show tom around the place. I doubt that he would tell tom misinformation...
But almost all of the energy we use came from the sun. Its directly stored in massive liquid deposits called oil. All of the matter on the planet came out of a star at some point anyway
Highly, highly, HIGHLY recommended everyone watches "The Dish" from 2000 (starring Sam Neill and Patrick Warburton) -- it's a comedy movie about how a town in rural Australia was chosen to transmit around the world the images from the 1969 moon landing, and the technological challenges they faced way back then. Aussie humour and cinema classic👌🏻
So jealous Tom. I am a Arecibo fanatic, but until they rebuild it, I needed a new favorite terrestrial telescope. Thanks to both of you for showing us a fantastic piece of engineering
It wasn't until the last 10 seconds that it actually hit me what "tilting the dish towards the ground" meant. For _several_ minutes, I was like haha, Tom's gonna do camera magic and 'hop' off the side of the dish. Just holy cow, the SCALE of this thing (and the building) is so… difficult to fathom.
This feels so nostalgic to watch as I remember going to the Dish for work experience in school with John. Got to use the telescope to collect some data from a neutron star. I recommend people to visit it.
A few months ago my brother did an internship here, and when he came back the number 1 thing he talked about was how great John was and how cool it was to go out onto the dish. Honestly, I’m kinda jealous of him, what an amazing experience.
Having been aware of this telescope because of the fantastic film The Dish, I never quite realized the scale of the thing until you were walking around just under it. Nor did I think when you said "...to touching the ground" I didn't ever think that meant quite literally. Absolutely amazing it can do that!
Another top video by Tom Scott and crew. Seeing that massive dish tilt right down to the ground was amazing, it must have been incredible to ride it. What a treat.
What an absolute legend and an incredible teacher! That feather demonstration absolutely blew my mind, and I think everyone's. That's just incredible. This is why we watch Tom Scott
You have no idea how well timed this was. I live in Australia and today I was actually looking to buy a decent telescope to get into astronomy and astro photography.
Now, do yourselves a favour and watch THE best Aussie made movie I've ever come across: The Dish (2000). Classic Australian humour at it's best, wrapped around the real life dramatic event of the moon landing. Still one of my all time favourite movies.
Having recently had a similar experience when visiting the VLA (albeit with a static dish), I can thoroughly recommend it, if you happen to visit New Mexico at some point! Maybe you could do a climbing tour of landmark radio telescopes? 🤩 And I can tell you, observing with these beauties is even more of a thrill. Best job in the world!
I knew you would need to get there sooner or later. It’s amazing how this thing is still in active use and decently reliable well past the intended lifespan.
I visited the parkes telescope a few years back and I can say it was such an amazing experience. Getting to learn the history behind it and the sheer scale of it was just fascinating to me
Tom as a seventy year old Australian I have to say I am very jealous. I have seen the dish from a distance but not up close and personal. Given the number of pieces you have produced featuring heights I find your continued apparent discomfort rather interesting. Please keep producing this material. I really enjoy your work.
Tom, thanks so much for this! That gentleman's analogies w the feather and cell phone on the moon were extremely relatable. One thing that would help the video a bit, tho, would be to show a world map or map of Australia and show where this is located. I know where Australia is, but am fairly clueless about locations within Australia... Thanks!
I love how John is having SO much fun showing all of this cool stuff to someone who's excited to hear about it. You can tell he thinks it's really really cool, too.
As an engineer, I just want to watch the structure move and stare at the machinery at work. Amazing stuff! (not saying Tom and John aren't good! It's great to see someone as invested in their work and happy to share!... and to see Tom as agog as I would be)
0:00 - I was totally seeing that opening shot at a very different scale, and thought those little upright rods in the middle distance were the height of a person. Then the manhole opened and blew my mind! 😂
I'm always fascinated by Tom's videos but this one was on a whole new level of interesting for me from a visual and mechanical design perspective. Thank you to Tom and his tour guide!
typical Aussie thinking :) We invent a lot of stuff cause of this sort of style of thinking. Why work hard if there's an easier way to acheive the same result :)
No doubt! I never thought about having the edge of the scope go down to get the equipment into the dish. But then, I should have thought of it. I’ve used the power of a piece of heavy equipment to help assemble and disassemble itself!
I LOVE this telescope so much! For my 40th birthday in 1999, my 2 daughters asked "Dad, what's THE most important place you want to visit?" - So... here we went! ...Also, "The Dish" (by director Rob Sitch) is perhaps THE most gentle, kind, quirky, fun, and lovely little movie ever made♥♥♥
Can we all just take a moment to appreciate how good of a guide John is? Presenting technical (and quite elaborate) information in an easy to understand manner, coupled with little quirks and bits of trivia about the facility without skipping a beat. I assume he has done this many times, but wow! A round of applause!
The way you had the feeling that you couldn't tell whether you were moving, or the dish was moving, or the sky was moving... I experienced something similar a few months ago when I took an engineering tour of the very honorable Mt. Wilson Observatory, located high above Pasadena, CA. Though built well over 100 years ago with parts that had to be lugged up the mountain by mules and very primitive Mack trucks, when you're in the 100" observatory dome and they turn the dome you think the telescope is turning, not you, the observer, on what you think is a unmoving platform. It's only when they open the outside door and you see that trees are moving by do you realize what's really happening.
This is amazing - thank you for going places I never would go to and speaking to people I never would (be able to) talk to. I owe you much regarding my horizon! Thank you!
Can we take a moment to appreciate the camera operator here, who not only kept tom perfectly in frame whilst descending a moving dish, but also kept the shot level whilst doing that, without a horizon!
There are a good few videos like that, and I'm assuming a good portion has to do with a natural sense of balance and footing taking a more subconscious place in the mind since more focus is on placement/aiming of the shot itself. So when things go wonky and Tom is allowed the resources to get fumbly and worried, the camera operator's greater focus is on keeping Tom framed and likely holding back laughs haha
Awesome video, Tom! I've been there, but only on the ground / in the visitors' center. The telescope is spectacular enough from there, but the view inside the dish is amazing 🙂🙃🙂
That was actually a fantastic explanation! I had no idea so little energy was collected, we know so much from little information. Also: the Alarm it sounded reminds me of regional footy games. Noice
✝️ LORD JESUS DIED & ROSE AGAIN TO PAY THE DEBT OF UR SIN! ✅By Faith in the sacrifice God has made are we saved from the penalty of sin! 🔵Turn from your sin that leads to death & accept His Gift that leads to eternal Life! 💜We are all sinners that need God. No one can say they are perfect to be able to pay their debt of sin. This is why only God could pay the penalty for us, that is merciful Love!
Tom Scott you are the coolest!!! Thank you so much for the hard work you and your team put into making these videos possible. This, is what JPvid is all about ✨
As a radio astronomer, I was so happy to see this video! There really is nothing like going up into a dish - I've been on the Efflesberg radio telescope. I've never observed with Parkes, but I have with another Australian telescope, ATCA (they're both operated by the same institute). It's an amazing feeling when you're observing remotely from the UK, and knowing that you're responsible for such huge things turning and looking at astronomical objects for you. You might be sick of radio astronomy now, but you have got an invite to Jodrell Bank Observatory in your suggestions submission form! Come say hello next time you're up this way. :)
I was in Effelsberg about thirty years ago as a really interested kid (not an astronomer, still became a physicist). I'm still impressed and jealous by you gals and guys getting the bigger toys.. (though Effelsberg is, I believe, no longer operational, isn't it?).
@Jett Nash in short yes. In longer form kinda. The satellites operate on different frequencies mostly to what is being observed and in some places starlink is turned off around the telescopes. If you take a look at their coverage map you'll see a big missing circle in western Australia. That's over the square kilometre array that's being built there. It's much more of an issue for optical astronomy. SpaceX are at least working on it now and all of their future satellites are to be at magnitude -7 so they should be invisible to the naked eye. It'll probably help by not totally flooding the optical sensors but it'll still get in the way probably.
@zyeborm Dad was involved in making part of the mount for the Anglo-Australian Telescope at Siding Springs. He always said he built toys for scientists.
I had the incredible experience of doing my school work experience for a week at the Hobart Mt Pleasant Observatory, where I was allowed to help service a 24m and 12m radio telescope on top of an old NASA cherry picker type truck. Additionally much of the equipment and computers was donated from NASA.
One small step for Tom, at the end! I'm not just taking a phrase from space lore in a silly way, I genuinely thought from the beginning that Tom not wearing a harness and relying utterly on correctly repositioning himself to avoid tumbling to disaster was crazy risky. Then it was revealed how the curve lines up with the ground at full deflection wasn't so bad.
There was previous video that had a similarly enthusiastic and informative expert guide Tom was interviewing although I cannot remember the exact details. I think it was maybe a waterworks or bridge-works?
Hi Tom, I love this video! I'm an insect migration scientist and every year we travel to the Pass of Bujaruelo in the Pyrenees to study the Autumnal insect migration. On some days we have upwards of a million hoverflies moving through the 30m wide pass, all using the sun as a compass and the wind to power their movements. It is a truly remarkable site and could be a fun idea for a video!
The mic drop moment (or feather, in this case!) at 2:30 is an incredible bit of information and such a powerful demonstration of just how much effort goes into radio-astronomy. And tom's look when he hears it is a testament to that! Brilliant video, and brilliant guide work from John.
I love how John is having SO much fun showing all of this cool stuff to someone who's excited to hear about it. You can tell he thinks it's really really cool, too.
@Matteo Maximov You could tell when some of the questions Tom asked were about more specific parts and John looked both slightly surprised and really glad to hear those specific questions
I believe the entire instrument was designed by Barnes Wallis and part of the genius of the design is that clever cantilevering means that when the collector is tilted from vertical, instead of it distorting under gravity, the redirected forces actually tighten up the focus.
Immediately intrigued by Tom Scott emerging from his burrow like a science-obsessed badger, and then John held my attention for ten minutes. This is a top-tier Blue Peter segment!
Fun fact: this is the telescope that picked mysterious radio signals at random times during daytime for 17 years. Then they were finally able to identify the signals: they came from a microwave oven in the facility. Source: The Guardian - Microwave oven to blame for mystery signal that left astronomers stumped
As a deep sky astrophotographer, this is one of the videos I’ve understood the best! Really cool to see. I used to visit Goonhilly a lot as a child and the dishes there were so amazing to see, almost ominous figures. Equatorial (and Alt-az) mounts are really fascinating the way they work and are essential to what most astronomers now do. I timelapse my telescope setup pointing at the night sky a lot, but I think most people don’t quite realise they move at an incredibly slow speed making a timelapse necessary to even see the movement.
THE DISH!!!!!! I am so exited to see the location of my favourite childhood movie. It's really interesting to see which parts were featured in the movie and which were made up. I am incredibly jealous, I really hope to go see it myself some day, though I doubt they let just anyone ride the dish as it moves, let alone play cricket on it....
“The amount of energy the feather expended when it struck the floor is more energy than has ever been collected by every radio telescope ever” what a mind boggling comparison!
I'm not sure about every radio telescope, but there are some you can't even use cars with spark plugs around because the spark to start the combustion will get picked up. The Green Bank Observatory over in West Virginia has to keep a little fleet of diesel cars to navigate the grounds.
no wonder a smartphone, which emits radiation in the order of milliwatts, shines as bright as a bonfire to a telescope like this, even when placed on the moon.
Back in college I used to partake in Seti@home, where volunteers used their computers to analyze data from telescope like these. Never found anything but it felt good to be a small part of progress
I grew up watching 'The Dish' and even got to visit Parks as a kid (too young to remember much about it though unfortunately). I've always wanted to ride on it. Tom, you're living my dream!
I loved that. I remember years ago, seeing a programme where a guy was going up to change the aircraft warning light at the top of the spire of Salisbury Cathedral, and he went up inside, on increasingly narrow and rickety spiral stairs, and the opened a door, and it cut to the view from below, and it was a tiny little hatch right at the top of the spire.
The amount of energy the feather expended when it struck the floor is more energy than has ever been collected by every radio telescope ever” what a mind boggling comparison!
✝️ LORD JESUS DIED & ROSE AGAIN TO PAY THE DEBT OF UR SIN! ✅By Faith in the sacrifice God has made are we saved from the penalty of sin! 🔵Turn from your sin that leads to death & accept His Gift that leads to eternal Life! 💜We are all sinners that need God. No one can say they are perfect to be able to pay their debt of sin. This is why only God could pay the penalty for us, that is merciful Love!
6:58 Star trackers in missles used to work like this, except for the constant rotation thing - they instead played a tape of were a reference star is supposed to be as a function of time.
As an Aussie, I need to let you all in on a little secret: John the Dish Wrangler might love his job, but he would have been really keen to see the end of Friday afternoon so that he could go home and sink a few tinnies with his mates. Signed: Mick, A guy who also loves science and works in a pathology lab at a major hospital… also doing a science every day 😊
If anyone is wondering about the film that Tom mentioned that was filmed here, it's called "The Dish" and it follows the story of tracking and receiving radio/tv signals from Apollo 11. Cracking film! Great video Tom!
