Out in Manchester , a remarkably hefty , 3,200 ton receiving set telescope has sat atop a field for almost 60 years . But the story of how it got there — and how near it came , even mid - construction , to not being there — is a narrative of an implausibly unaired scientific call .
Bernard Lovell had big plans to apply his experience read radar during World War I for a more peaceable enterprise : the building of a giant radio telescope . The mental synthesis was fraught with problems from the beginning , the biggest one , though , was combining of both a scientific and a construction variety .
By 1951 , work had already begun , when hydrogen atoms were detected in the Milky Way , meaning that scientists would suddenly need to be capable to look at much shorter wavelengths . Using this — at the sentence brand newfangled — scientific finding , Lovell halted the workers and re - design the telescope that they would be fabricate on the place .
Just how well the redesign had worked though did n’t really become apparent a few twelvemonth later in 1957 , the twelvemonth when Sputnik was launch . Though other telescopes tried , the Lovell Telescope ( yep , they eventually named it after him ) wasthe only one that oversee to successfully pick upthe orbiter over its microwave radar .
[ H / T commenterSimon Bradshawwho indicate to Lovell ’s book on the study , The Story of Jodrell Bank , noting “ I take his own story of it – a book that , as a former project director , I feel should have been subtitled ‘ How an astronomer learn undertaking management the really , really hard mode . ’ ” ]
mental image : Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics , University of Manchester
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