A pale moon hovers over the serene landscape that stretches for miles in every direction. The last of the twilight sinks behind the ragged line of the hills of the Western Ghats as a breeze ruffles the grass, undisturbed by human presence. It’s a scene straight out of a science fiction movie: a mammoth dish-antenna towers over this desolate landscape, silhouetted against the sky, gigantic arms glinting white in the moonlight. Its concave face points up at the night sky, freckled with a million stars.
Less than a mile away at the GMRT labs, a lone scientist sits at a bank of computer terminals. CPUs hum in the adjoining room. The scientist pulls his lab coat tightly around him: in here, the temperature is kept at a constant 14° C to keep the highly sensitive equipment from overheating. The building he sits in is sealed off from the outside world, its windows covered by a fine, copper-mesh shielding that stops all radiation from entering – television, radio and cell-phone signals, microwaves and signals generated by electronic equipment.
Less than a mile away at the GMRT labs, a lone scientist sits at a bank of computer terminals. CPUs hum in the adjoining room. The scientist pulls his lab coat tightly around him: in here, the temperature is kept at a constant 14° C to keep the highly sensitive equipment from overheating. The building he sits in is sealed off from the outside world, its windows covered by a fine, copper-mesh shielding that stops all radiation from entering – television, radio and cell-phone signals, microwaves and signals generated by electronic equipment.
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