HORN ANTENNA EVENT (April 20, 2024)

Above photo: Nobel Laureates Bob Wilson (right) and Joe Taylor (left) at the Horn Antenna celebration.

April 20, 2024

Holmdel park dedicated to local scientist who discovered proof of the Big Bang

Deeptime Network Hosts Event on same day at Bell Works Building

Sixty years ago, two radio astronomers working for Bell Labs, Arno Penzias and Bob Wilson, accidentally detected the cosmic microwave background radiation, proof that the universe began in a fireball.   Holmdel recently purchased the land, thus preserving the Horn Antenna from demolition.  An education center will be built there.  The April 20th celebration dedicated the new park in honor of Holmdel resident and Nobel Laureate Dr. Bob Wilson.

To read an article about the HORN ANTENNA ribbon cutting celebration in Holmdel, New Jersey, click on the blue button above right.

Jennifer Morgan (president, Deeptime Network) and Sarbmeet Kanwal (Deeptime Network presenter) are quoted in the article.

Deeptime Network member and certified Deeptime Leader (2023) Kendra Kehde read her poem, The Big Bang Blows its Horn, as part of the ribbon cutting ceremony.  See Kendra’s poem below.

Video from the Asbury Park Press of BOB WILSON that includes a picture of STEPHAN MARTIN, (director, Deeptime Leadership & Wellbeing Program) with his ear to the universe through the antenna.  Click here!

Steve’s response to the video:

Fantastic! Thank you so much for sharing this clip and photo of me Sarbmeet. I love the story that Bob shared – it’s so full of his humble wit and his scientific background and insight. The image that Doug took of me is also iconic – listening to the universe is really what my allurement has been about my whole life! It’s such a great photo, as are all the photos in the montage.

Also underappreciated at the Bell Works site is the contribution of Karl Jansky, who first build a radio receiver in 1933 that detected radio waves from the center of the galaxy – he literally heard the voice of the Milky Way! His antenna was the first time that extraterrestrial radio waves had been detected – that the universe was speaking to us through radio wavelengths – and so inadvertently founded the whole field of radio astronomy!

I’m so glad you told me about the site being preserved on the Bell Works property and I visited it with Brian and Joseph on our way back from the site (photos attached). It’s also a sacred site where humans first heard the voice of the universe and I’m glad that Bob mentioned Jansky in his talk. Radio energy is also measured in a unit called janskys, in honor of Karl’s early work here.

I also noticed that the Horn site would a wonderful place to do some stargazing, so I hope that access to the site is permitted after hours and that local astronomy groups are able to hold public observing sessions there in the future.

Deeptime Network Event:

Following the ribbon cutting, Karen Kudebeh lead an orientation to land including seven directions — west, north, east, south, up, down and inside.  In the afternoon, the Deeptime Network hosted an event at the Bell Works building, formerly the Bell Labs building where numerous research breakthroughs in telecommunications.  Dr. Sarbmeet Kanwal presented about the omnicentric universe, Stephan Martin talked about tuning in to the universe, and Orla Hazra discussed our intimate birthing inside the universe, showing the WMAP image of the universe of the universe 380,000 years as our as our own sonogram.

 

 

Description of the Day from Sarbmeet Kanwal

Our event last Saturday hit all the high notes we could have dreamt of. Jennifer’s exquisite planning and attention to detail made every aspect of this event come together like the crescendo of an orchestral arrangement. And all of your wishes and prayers from far and wide added an extra flourish on top, for which the only word that comes to my mind is Deeptime emergence. Receiving those beautiful, prayerful notes from many of you in the midst of our anxious last couple of days of planning felt like we were being held in a warm supportive embrace by the whole Deeptime community.

Among the few hundred assembled on top of the sacred hill that day were politicians, scientists, journalists, us deeptimers and even a few school children who had played a part in saving the antenna. We were greeted by the freshness of spring blossoms and the sweet scent of wet soill, but what dominated the ambience in the air was the magnificent opening and the imposing geometry of the 60 foot long Horn, in whose shadow we were all gathered. After a few politicians recounted their own contributions to saving the antenna it was one of us, Kendra Kehde, who mesmerized the gathering with her glorious poem, The Big Bang Blows its own Horn. It was the absolute highlight of the day.  And then as Bob Wislon enlightened us with the lustrous tale of his great cosmic discovery, the clouds parted to the sun, lighting up the antenna along with the whole beautiful landscape. The proverbial ribbon was finally cut, and as the others started to disperse, we made our own little circle close to the antenna to listen to Karen Kudabeh’s 7 directions orientation exercise. She connected the landmarks on all sides of us with their deep time histories in a way that brought out the true significance of where we were all situated that day. As we started to connect to the magnificence of our larger home, we began to see how it was calling each of us into action at that present moment.

The inspiration that arose in the morning flowed through the indoor program in the afternoon. Jennifer, Steve, Orla and I all spoke from our hearts which were in connection with the universe, to an audience that listened in rapt attention. Amazing comments and questions were raised and very palpable resonances could be felt circling around the room. In the end we meditated to the static hiss (part of which can be attributed to the cosmic background radiation) from Orla’s old world radio followed by a dance to Joyce’s “I come from the fireball” song.

The first in-person Deeptime event was a resounding success. We missed many of you, but I am sure we will have more of these soon!

Sarbmeet

 

 

The Big Bang Blows Its Own Horn 

by Kendra Kehde

Fifty-eight years after the fact,
I parked outside chained gates,
defied No Trespassing signs
to walk the drive of Bell Labs’ abandoned annex.
I trudged against New Jersey’s December wind
up the steep trail of broken asphalt.

And there it was, still hugging the peak
of Crawford Hill, the highest point
on Monmouth County’s coastal plain:
the Holmdel Horn Antenna,
sixteen tons of Nobel-enabling aluminum creation.

I sat by a plaque citing the accidental detection in 1964
of the near-imperceptible thermal bath—
photons set free to fly by the first-formed atoms—
those original waves of light

now flowing through my eyes, wafting through
my bones and hands. Now soaking the trees, the hill,
the dried brambles at the edge of the site, still
radiating the remembered breath of hot, dense newness.

I imagined an incantatory calling forth
by horned deities in their fecund power,
companioned by insect ancestors,
their feelers alert and sensing.

I saw horn-amulet-adorned healers
from every continent riding Earth’s salt sway
knowing the sacred horn-shaped symbol
united Eros and Agape:
the ‘aperture sensitive’ pointy end
telescoping into the wide-open chalice of embrace.

For in every direction the astronomer-shamans played the great Horn—
no matter how they pursed the lips of science to direct the sound,
the antenna’s penetrating beam echoed as receptacle:
a strange, soft, ceaseless hum—
that—it turns out—wasn’t pigeon dung—

but the background to love, laughter, black holes,
rhinoceri, and whales’ watery oratorio:
A haunting, remembered, re-membering strain,
now performed in microwave.

Earth’s goose-pimple hill shivered in awareness.
Grasses surrounding the small outbuildings spiked to attention.
Slim young maples and beeches danced empathic tree glee,
while the spongy fungi nodded sagely

in the dark, mycorrhizal loam of Earth
in the root of all things
in the root of all thing-ing

seeing, feeling, and hearing—
Big Bang’s emberglow aftersong still
hissing and floating
through every expanding breath of cosmological being

irrefutable at last—duly measured and noted.

The song—kissed and known—by the singing.

Kendra Kehde is a scholar, poet, and visual artist exploring the intersection of consciousness, embodiment, and creative emergence with the discourses of science, history, philosophy, and music.  She’s a certified Deeptime Leader.