Such interference with cosmic signals is similar to that arising in the communication between the aircraft pilot and the control tower. To avoid it, there is the usual announcement before take off or landing, asking passengers to switch off all electronic devices, lap tops, and cell phones.

It is ironical that technological advances help the astronomer devise more and more efficient telescopes, and yet the same advances also bring in their wake threats like light and heat pollution and growing radio noise. As these threats grow, a time will come when astronomers would be forced to switch all their serious efforts at observing the universe to space. As the salutary experience of the Hubble Space Telescope shows, in space there is no light pollution, no air currents nor interference from man made devices... yet.

The writer is an eminent astrophysicist and astronomer