Will we finally track down extraterrestrials? Yesterday work began on a vast new radio telescope, with the power to unlock some of the deepest secrets of the universe.
Scientific 'project of the century' has begun
Will we finally track down extraterrestrials? Yesterday work began on a vast new radio telescope, with the power to unlock some of the deepest secrets of the universe.
Two less likely places to party would be hard to find. One was the Karoo, a South African desert whose boundaries have never been defined. The other was Murchison, the only county in Australia so remote that it does not possess a town. But yesterday officials from eight countries converged on both to celebrate an extraordinary moment in science.
After the twin opening ceremonies, building work began on the Square Kilometre Array telescope - SKA for short. When finished, its 197 dishes and 130,000 antennae will be eight times more sensitive than existing telescopes, and able to map the sky 135 times faster.
"To put the sensitivity of the SKA into perspective, [it] could detect a mobile phone in the pocket of an astronaut on Mars, 225 million kilometres away," says Dr Danny Price from the Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy. More significantly, if there are intelligent beings with technology like ours, it could detect radiation from their radio and telecommunication networks.
Scientists hope it will allow astronomers to peer back billions of years to the "cosmic dawn", when the first stars were forming. This should help work out how galaxies take shape, and the nature of the "dark energy" driving the cosmos apart.
They also hope that the radio waves from dead stars will provide a deeper understanding of gravity. "Fast radio bursts", which produce the equivalent of a year's energy from the sun in a fraction of a second, will be investigated too.
The SKA's two sites will perform different functions. The Australian site has been named SKA-Low because its Christmas-tree-like antennae are sensitive to low-frequency radio signals. The South Africa site, SKA-Mid, will collect signals on higher frequencies.
Their remote locations have been chosen because radio waves from other sources, such as mobile phones, would interfere with their work.
According to SKA-Low's director, Dr Sarah Pearce, the observatory will "define the next 50 years for radio astronomy, charting the birth and death of galaxies, searching for new types of gravitational waves and expanding the boundaries of what we know about the universe".
The data collected will be processed by a computer system based in Britain, which is the largest funder of the SKA.1 The team running it expect to receive 600 million gigabytesA unit of storage capacity. Researchers calculate this statistic by assigning rough values in these terms to words as well as computer data. of data a year.
China, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal and Switzerland are the other countries involved, and half a dozen more are keen to join the project. The aboriginalIndigenous or existing in a land before the arrival of colonisers. people who own the Australian site, the Wajarri Yamaji, have renamed it "Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara" - meaning "sharing sky and stars".
There have been few projects of such magnitude in human history. The Large Hadron ColliderThe world's most powerful machine for smashing high-energy particles together. built by the European Organisation for Nuclear Research was a collaboration between over 10,000 scientists from more than 100 countries. The International Space StationA joint project between the US, Russia, Japan, Canada and the European Space Agency. was created by the space agencies of the US, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada.
<h5 class=" eplus-wrapper" id="question"><strong>Will we finally track down extraterrestrials?</strong></h5>
Yes: The universe is so vast that we cannot be alone, but previous radio telescopes have not been powerful enough to pick up radiation from alien telecom systems. This will be our best ever hope.
No: We will do exactly the opposite. With this super-telescope we will conduct a search of the universe on a colossal scale, and finally establish beyond reasonable doubt that aliens do not exist.
Or... We are very likely to find some evidence of intelligent life outside our universe, but there is no reason to believe that it would respond. Sensible aliens would want nothing to do with us.
Gigabytes - A unit of storage capacity. Researchers calculate this statistic by assigning rough values in these terms to words as well as computer data.
Aboriginal - Indigenous or existing in a land before the arrival of colonisers.
Large Hadron Collider - The world's most powerful machine for smashing high-energy particles together.
International Space Station - A joint project between the US, Russia, Japan, Canada and the European Space Agency.
Scientific ‘project of the century’ has begun

Glossary
Gigabytes - A unit of storage capacity. Researchers calculate this statistic by assigning rough values in these terms to words as well as computer data.
Aboriginal - Indigenous or existing in a land before the arrival of colonisers.
Large Hadron Collider - The world's most powerful machine for smashing high-energy particles together.
International Space Station - A joint project between the US, Russia, Japan, Canada and the European Space Agency.