Mobile ban highlights radio pollution danger

A conference centre is being forced to consider banning mobile phones because they interfere with research at the nearby Jodrell Bank Observatory.

The proposed ban opens up the wider issue of radio pollution and its effect upon physicists and astronomers.

Cranage Hall conference centre is now obliged to stay in regular contact with Nuffield Radio Astronomy Labs - which runs Jodrell Bank - to try to minimise the problem.

Scientists at the Labs - which is currently involved in the search for extraterrestrial life - are worried that electrical activity will corrupt the results of their research, and radio activity near the site is considered a particular nuisance.

Labs' director, Andrew Lyne, said: "It is a major problem. Signals are in the order of ten to the power of minus twenty watts - much less than those coming out of radio transmitters on the ground. Even effects from sidebands and leakage from neighbouring frequencies can masquerade as signals from the sky."

A spokesman for the University of Manchester's department of Physics and Astronomy, which is a primary user of the Jodrell Bank facility, said: "Not only is Jodrell Bank the largest radio telescope in the UK, but it forms an essential part of a national and international network of sites involved in radio astronomy."