While computer owners looking to upgrade their graphics cards are well aware of the shortages and steep price increases caused by cryptocurrency mining, those working in the sciences are also beginning to feel the pinch.<\/p>\n
This is according to Professor Aaron Parsons, an astronomer at the University of California: Berkeley, who is currently working on Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array\u00a0(HERA) telescope upgrades in South Africa.<\/p>\n
The HERA\u00a0has been designed to listen to low frequency radio waves emitted by the reionising hydrogen gas that permeated the universe before the first stars and galaxies formed. Using this technology Parsons is hoping to discover the first stars that formed in our Universe around 13 billion years ago.<\/p>\n
Speaking to the Verge<\/a><\/strong>, Parsons said that as part of his work, he is currently upgrading the HERA to a total of 350 antennas.\u00a0But last week, he found that the GPUs he needed for the upgrades had doubled in price \u2014 from $500 to $1,000.<\/p>\n \u201cI kind of rolled my eyes a little bit,\u201d Parsons said. \u201cI usually think of cryptocurrency as some kind of peripheral thing, and I was surprised and a bit annoyed to discover that it\u2019s impacting the bottom line of our telescope.\u201d<\/p>\n