LARGEST RADIO TELESCOPE – SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
News: Work
on world’s largest radio telescope begins in Australia, South Africa
What's in the news?
● The
construction of the largest radio astronomy facility in the world began in Australia and South Africa.
● The
Square Kilometer Array (SKA) will
consist of 131,072 low-frequency antennae in Australia (SKA-Low), combined with
a sister facility (SKA Mid) in South Africa with 133 dish antennae.
SKA project:
● The
SKA project is an international effort to build the world’s largest telescope. As the name suggests, the telescope will
eventually have a collecting area of over a square kilometer.
● The
pre-construction development for the project initially began in 2013. Even
though construction for the project has already begun, it is only expected to
begin science observations in the late 2020s.
Significance:
● Scientists
will focus on a variety of different science goals for the immensely powerful
telescope, from challenging the limits
of Einstein’s theory of relativity to understanding the mysterious force known
as dark energy.
● According
to Trott, SKA will allow scientists to observe
the “cosmic dawn,” or the beginning of the Universe when the first stars
and galaxies formed. This period marks
the end of the “cosmic dark ages,” which was a period after the Big Bang when
the Universe cooled down through expansion.
○ This
dark universe was transformed by the light from the first stars, which tore
apart electrons and protons in neutral hydrogen atoms, transforming the
universe from dark and neutral to bright and ionized.
○ SKA
will map this fog of hydrogen,
allowing scientists to explore the births and deaths of the earliest stars and
galaxies.
○ Pearce
told The Guardian that the SKA will be “sensitive enough to detect an airport
radar on a planet circling a star tens of light years away,” saying that it
could be used to look for signs of extraterrestrial life.