munich

Research ministers of member states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) are to be asked later this month to set up a task force to draw up stricter rules for sharing the radio spectrum between astronomers and telecommunications industries.

The international task force, whose members will include representatives of both sides, will also be asked to find ways of preserving ‘radio-quiet zones’ for the most sensitive radioastronomy research (see above).

A recently published OECD report points out that interference in frequencies of importance to radioastronomers will become a much greater problem in the next decade. The report was prepared by a working group set up two years ago by the OECD's Megascience Forum (see Nature 390, 103; 104; 1997).

Next-generation radiotelescopes are being designed to pick up very weak signals at sub-millimetre wavelengths to allow the study of events very early in the history of the Universe.

But the increased sensitivity of such telescopes makes them proportionately more sensitive to interference, says the report. Also, commercial pressure from telecommunications industries on high-frequency sub-millimetre bands is set to mushroom.

Satellite records show that there are still a few radio-quiet zones on Earth, for example in western Australia and northern Chile. “We have to keep them quiet,” says Harvey Butcher, chairman of the task force and general director of the Netherlands Foundation for Research in Astronomy.

On a task force to plan how to accommodate everyone's interests, Butcher says, “The problem is too big to solve in the long term without everyone getting together”.