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CHRI is officially interstellar!

This year's World Space Week (October 4-10) highlighted the technologies and organizations changing how humanity reaches and uses space so we started 'nerding out' about just how far CHRI Radio's FM broadcast can reach! ...

Did you know that FM radio waves escape Earth's atmosphere and travel through the vacuum of space at the speed of light?
Because CHRI is almost 30 years old, our very first broadcasts have already travelled nearly 30 light-years into the cosmos! This means that if there is intelligent life in nearby star systems, they could officially be tuning into CHRI right now.
Here is who is currently within our broadcast range:

Vega: Located 25 light-years away, listeners on this bright star's planets could have been enjoying our station for the last five years.

Delta Eridani: At 29 light-years away, our earliest 1990s broadcasts are just reaching them now.

A mind-bending thought experiment:
If you were to hop into a spaceship and travel away from Earth at 60% the speed of light, time dilation and the Doppler effect would kick in. You would actually hear the CHRI broadcast playing at half-speed "slow motion"!

Whether you are listening from your car, your kitchen, or a spaceship passing Vega, thank you for being part of the CHRI family for the last three decades.

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If this is too "science-y" for you, we’ve asked Producer Will to simplify the lightyear science a little for us:

Will: “I’ll put my nerd hat on here and break it down:
• You’re travelling directly away from the radio station
• The radio waves (electromagnetic radiation) are travelling through the vacuum of space at the speed of light, 179,875 kilometers per second
• Because of such high speeds, you need to do the calculation using the relativistic Doppler formula (I definitely had to look up the correct formula.)
• You’re moving at 60% the speed of light, and the radio on your ultra-fast spaceship is tuned to 99.1FM
• You need to move at 60%, not 50% as you would guess, because of the laws of relativity and time dilation.
• You’re literally catching-up to the radio waves as they travel, so you’re hearing the broadcast at half speed
• Alternatively, if you were moving at 60% the speed of light towards the broadcast, it would be playing in double-speed.

It’s kind of like if you were driving down a highway beside a lake, and you were driving the same speed as the wind. The waves on the lake would look like they’re not moving at all, but in reality it’s because you’re moving at the same speed. Your viewpoint is relative to the waves.”

There, that’s better! 😊

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