Short Wave - A Shortwave Christmas Carol

Episode Date: December 24, 2019

On Christmas Eve, scientists at field stations across Antarctica sing carols to one another...via shortwave. On today's episode, the Short Wave podcast explores shortwave radio. We speak with space physicist and electrical engineer Nathaniel Frissell about this Antarctic Christmas Carol tradition and his use of shortwave radio for community science. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Hey, I'm Britt Hansen. And I'm Rebecca Ramirez. We're the producers on this podcast. Some might say the real talent. Yeah, I mean, I would say that. Yeah. Anyway, once a year, at this time, we ask for your help to keep this podcast coming to you for free each and every weekday. Here's how you can help.

Go to donate.npr.org slash short to find your local public radio station and give any amount you can. Whatever you can give, we're super grateful. Okay, turning it over to Maddie Safaya and Emily Kwong. Let's do the show. You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hello, hello, anybody there? So, Maddie, yes ma'am. Last week, Britt and I connected to a radio station.

This is VIA Radio in Pittston, Pennsylvania. To have a conversation with space physicist and electrical engineer Nathaniel Frizzell. Well, thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here. And in 2014, his research took him to Antarctica. Cool. Yeah, home to the South Pole and a hub of scientific activity with research stations and field camps spread across the continent. New Zealand has a station down there.

Several European countries do too. Scientists are asking questions you can only answer in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean this time of year about wildlife. Like penguins. Yeah, sure, like penguins. Microbiology, tectonics, the northern lights. Nathaniel was down there to look at the Earth's magnetic field and polar regions. I picture this whole space, Maddie, like science summer camp, but spread across a desolate icebound landscape.

What a dream. Yeah, you're kind of summer camp. Yeah. And these people, they're far from home, which can be really tough during the holidays. Sure. So Nathaniel, when he was down there, took part in a musical tradition that cues up every year on this day, December 24th. South Pole Station, we are ready and start. Standing by, thanks.

The Antarctic Christmas Carol. Basically, the different stations in Antarctica sing to each other over shortwave radio. Oh, my God. This is legitimately the cutest thing perhaps I have ever heard. They're singing over the radio? That transmission was from the Amundsen Scott South Pole Station.

Amundsen, shout out. Yeah. Here's a Christmas Carol from the, Italian station, Mario Zichelli, singing an Italian Christmas Carol. I really like this. I firmly believe that this is cute. Nathaniel would have to agree with you. And it's a beautiful thing.

And, you know, the different stations and people, they have to watch out for each other because it's a difficult environment down there. And Nathaniel listening at McMurdo Station in a blue penguin hoodie, I'll add, wondered if this caroling could be heard beyond Antarctica by shortwave listening. listeners in other parts of the world. He wanted to know how far can these transmissions really travel? So how far away were people able to listen? Well, before the caroling began, Nathaniel put out an alert to shortwave radio listeners saying, hey, if you can hear this, email us and let us know. And people did. They were able to tune in. He got emails from the Netherlands, South America,

places far away from Antarctica. Some people were able to catch snippets of this singing at the bottom of the world. So today on the show, the Shortwave podcast looks at Shortwave Radio, how it works, how it travels, and how Nathaniel Frizzell is leveraging a community of shortwave radio listeners for science. Emily Kwong, our shortwave expert is Nathaniel Frizzell. Yes, he's an assistant professor of physics and engineering at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania. Okay, so obviously I know of Shortwave, the charming daily science podcast, but tell me about shortwave as in Shortwave radio. So since the 1900s, we've been using radio waves to communicate.

The waves are all different sizes. The lower the waves frequency, the longer the wavelength. One of the unique characteristics of shortwave radio is that it can travel, the radio waves can travel long distances, very long distances around the world. Because they're three to 30 megahertz in frequency, they travel through space to this electrically charged part of our atmosphere called the ionosphere and are reflected or refracted back. down to Earth. If we did not have the ionosphere, these shortwave signals would travel often to space and not be able to travel around the globe. But luckily for us, they can travel around the globe. They propagate far distances and those with receivers on Earth are able to listen. Nathaniel loves shortwave because you don't need a lot of equipment to send and capture one of these transmissions.

Oh, it can be incredibly simple. You need a transmitter on one side and a receiver on the other and a decent antenna. And when I say a transmitter, there are some people who they make their goal to talk as far around the world as possible with as little as equipment as possible, as low power as possible. So maybe using a quarter of a watt and $10 worth of parts, people are able to send signals that go all the way around the globe. This is the ultimate lo-fi form of communication I'm gathering. Right. Yeah. And that communication could be anything, broadcast, propaganda, spy stations, emergency information weather reports, rag-chewing, which is a term to describe people just talking about their daily life. So radio, Twitter?

Yeah, the transmission just has to fall within the right frequency range to count a shorewave. And there's an international community of hobby radio operators who seek out a special license from their respective governments to do this. That's called ham radio. Ham, yeah, that's the hobby of using this radio. So Nathaniel discovered that community on a Boy Scout, Jamber. A ham radio operator had set up a station in the middle of the woods. I just heard all this crackling and buzzing sounds coming out of the radio, and I heard him talking to these faraway places.

And that was just really fascinating to me. And he was hooked. Got his license in 1998, just a teenager transmitting to whoever was listening in the northern New Jersey, New York metropolitan area. So just pure Bruce Springsteen propaganda. It was mostly just his call sign. And 73, this is W2NAF Whiskey 2 November Alpha Foxtrot. 73 means best regards.

It's a pretty common ham radio sign off. Eventually, he upgraded to a better transmitter, threw a wire out the window of his bedroom, and attached it to a tree in his front yard, and he managed to get a hold of a station in Hungary. And it was just a very short contact, but, you know, that was pretty neat. You just throw a wire out your window and you're able to talk to a guy in Hungary. and it worked.

And these moments stayed with him, propelling his scientific methodology and his career. Cool. Okay, so tell me a little bit about that. How has Nathaniel used shortwave for science? In a lot of interesting ways, because disturbances happening in the ionosphere, space weather, solar wind conditions, all of that would affect radio waves. So in grad school, he was able to show how a solar flare caused a radio blackout. So cool. Yeah, and during the big 2017 solar eclipse, which I missed because it was cloudy.

Tragedy. So sad. But Nathaniel hosted a community science experiment through his group Hamse. The group measured how the eclipse affected the transmission of medium and high frequency radio waves. And the way he's using radio for scientific inquiry is so innovative that this year, the National Science Foundation awarded him a $1.3 million grant. Dang. To do what?

Well, he wants to bring universities and this network of ham radio operators together to track what's going on in the ionosphere where short waves propagate in a more day-to-day way, which we don't really do right now. No, not really. We don't really understand what happens on short time scales. Like, why is the ionosphere doing this in like New York City but doing something else in Pennsylvania, overhead in Pennsylvania? And why is that important to understand the ionosphere to that level of detail? Well, we as a planet are really dependent on things happening in space. And disturbances in the ionosphere do affect communication satellites, global positioning systems, which are used to land planes. All these tools we rely on to keep us safe and connected. And so it's very important to try to understand how everything is connected together in order to make those systems more robust and in order to make them work. And in order to, you know, transmit Christmas carols around the world.

Essential. I think a lot of ham radio for me has always been about connecting people from different parts of the world together. And, you know, if you even look at like why ham radio exists, if you actually look in the laws, I believe it says that it's for international goodwill. And it's important to try and promote this international goodwill. Kwong, do you think our podcast connects people all around the world? I mean, we don't have 3 million listeners. That's how many people listen to Ham Radio.

Not yet. Not with that attitude. Okay, I know world domination is your project. But I will say, I got into radio because I enjoyed tuning in and not knowing what I was going to hear. Our podcast definitely does that. I hope so. I think so. So, from our team to whoever is out there listening in the world, happy holidays. Happy holidays.

This episode was produced by Britt Hansen and edited by Viet Leip. I'm Maddie Safaya. And I'm Emily Kwong. Tomorrow we'll have a little holiday message for you, and then we're back with normal episodes on the 26th. Thanks for listening to Shortwave from NPR.