Australia on Monday launched the construction of a vast array of antennas in its huge and desert hinterland, in preparation for the construction of the most powerful radio telescope in the world, project officials said.
Once erected, these antennas, coupled with a similar network built in South Africa, will form a virtual parabola called SKA (“Square Kilometer Array”). It will provide answers to fundamental questions about the universe, particularly around its creation.
This project, born in the 1990s, was delayed due to funding and diplomatic problems.
The director-general of the SKA organization, Philip Diamond, described this start of the work as a “crucial moment”. The telescope “will be one of mankind’s most important scientific endeavors,” he said.
The SKA must study some of the most violent cosmic phenomena, such as supernovae, black holes and the very first traces of the “big bang”, the gigantic explosion which gave birth to the universe more than 13 billion years ago. years.
Its name comes from the objective sought by its designers: a telescope with a collection area of one square kilometer. The South African and Australian parts, however, will have a combined collection area of just under half that area.
Both countries have vast expanses of desert with little exposure to radio waves, ideal conditions for such telescopes.
More than 130,000 Christmas tree-shaped antennas are to be erected in the state of Western Australia, on the traditional lands of the Wajarri Aboriginal people. The site was named “Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara”, which in the local language means “sharing the sky and the stars”.
The South African site will have nearly 200 satellite dishes in the remote Karoo region.
The project will “track the birth and death of galaxies, search for new types of gravitational waves, and push the boundaries of what we know about the universe,” said Sarah Pearce, director of the telescope.
Danny Price of the Curtin Institute for Radio Astronomy explained that this telescope “will be able to detect a cell phone in an astronaut’s pocket on Mars, 225 million miles away.”
The first scientific observations should take place at the end of the 2020s.
The organization has 14 members: United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the Netherlands.