Life in the Quiet Zone

Strange things happen when you drive into Green Bank, West Virginia. Most radio stations fade out. Phones become useless, except to tell you the time. If you need to make a call, you can use the phone booth at the edge of town. That’s right—the phone booth.

In the town of Green Bank, there is no cell phone service and no Wi-Fi. You won’t find many people learning the latest TikTok dances. You cannot text your friends.

Why? It’s not because the town somehow time-traveled into the past. It’s because Green Bank is home to an enormous telescope that is busy scanning the skies for signs from space—and it’s vital that nothing interferes with its work.

The first radio telescopes at the Green Bank Observatory were built in the 1950s. To protect them, the government created the National Radio Quiet Zone. (“Quiet” refers to the absence of radio waves, not sound; you’re free to make all the noise you want.) The Quiet Zone, which covers 13,000 square miles, straddles West Virginia and Virginia and includes a corner of Maryland.

The rules are strictest in Green Bank, especially within 10 miles of the telescope. There, you won’t find any TV or radio stations. Bluetooth devices, digital cameras, and microwaves are forbidden too—unless they are kept in a special container that blocks radio waves. Otherwise these devices will interfere with the telescope’s listening abilities.

So far, the telescope hasn’t found any signs of alien life. It has made other discoveries though. In the early 2000s, the GBT helped determine that the core of the planet Mercury is molten. In 2013, the telescope was used in a study that found that our galaxy, the Milky Way, is located in a cluster of about 100,000 other galaxies. The GBT also played a role in the landing of NASA’s Mars rover, Perseverance, this past February. It picked up the rover’s signals and sent them to NASA in California.

So what’s it like to live in the Quiet Zone? Kids in Green Bank aren’t completely cut off from the outside world. Home computers are connected to the internet—with wires that physically carry signals from internet providers. But the service can be slow. It’s easy enough to send an email or scroll through Instagram; a YouTube video, however, can take minutes to load. An entire Netflix movie? Forget about it.

For the majority of the area’s 143 residents, that’s just fine. Green Bank is nestled among the beautiful mountains of West Virginia. There are dense woods to explore, winding streams to fish in, and in the winter, snowy slopes to ski down. Kids spend time outside, care for pets or farm animals, and play sports. What they don’t do is check social media all day and night.

OK, are you ready to head out of Green Bank, to let your phone ding and flash its way back to life? Or maybe you’d like to stay a while? Maybe you think the Quiet Zone seems pretty nice.

^{This article was originally published in the May 2021 issue.}