Construction begins on the world’s biggest telescope costing £1.7 billion

Construction has officially begun on the world’s largest telescope – the £1.7 billion Square Kilometer Array (SKA).

This telescope will be it will initially consist of 197 dishes and 131,072 antennas spread across South Africa and Australia respectively, but will be based in the United Kingdom.

It will have many scientific goals, including the search for extraterrestrial life, testing Einstein’s general theory of relativity, and exploring the evolution of the early universe.

Groundbreaking ceremonies have been held in both Western Australia’s Murchison County and South Africa’s Northern Cape Karoo, marking the start of the construction phase.

Dr Sarah Pearce, head of telescope operations in Australia, said: “SKA telescopes will be sensitive enough to detect airport radar on a planet orbiting a star tens of light-years away, so that they can even answer the most important question of all: are we alone in the Universe?

‘Over the last fifty years we have seen our understanding of the Universe revolutionized.

‘The SKA Observatory will define the next fifty years for radio astronomy, recording the birth and death of galaxies, searching for new types of gravitational waves and pushing the boundaries of what we know about the Universe.’

The low-frequency radio telescope will be able to see the sky more clearly and reveal fainter details than current state-of-the-art telescopes.

One of its goals will be to study the first billion years after the “dark ages” of the universe, when the first stars and galaxies formed after the Big Bang.

To help you image this period before the first light sources were created, you’ll look for the earliest evidence of hydrogen.

Other goals include searching for gravitational waves emitted by dead stars, understanding cosmic magnetism, and detecting the mysterious millisecond bursts of radio waves known as fast radio bursts.

SKA Director General Professor Philip Diamond said: ‘The telescopes at the SKA Observatory will be one of humanity’s greatest scientific endeavors.

“I have been involved with the SKA project for the last 30 years, so to finally see construction start on the site is a momentous occasion.”

The construction brings together more than 500 engineers and 1,000 scientists in more than 20 countries.

When completed, the telescope will have a collection area of ​​hundreds of thousands of square meters, providing exceptional sensitivity and resolution.

Satellites and antennas are being built on sites currently used for smaller-scale radio telescopes, but the areas will be expanded.

To this end, land deals have been made with the Wajarri people in Western Australia and farmers in the Karoo, with the former organizing the local graduation ceremony.

The telescope will be able to capture extremely low-frequency waves, with wavelengths up to meters in length and which have traveled billions of light-years.

It will also be able to survey the sky up to 135 times faster than existing radio telescopes.

Therefore, SKA requires powerful computing to ingest and process the data in real time, and is expected to have a speed of eight terabits of data per second.

In April, it was announced that the UK will build the ‘brain’ of the telescope and it will be based in Manchester.

This is the software that will drive the observatory and help the antennas and dishes communicate and work together.

It will tell the telescopes where to look and when, diagnosing any problems and translating the telescope’s signals into usable data from which discoveries can be made.

SKA will join a number of other next-generation telescopes coming online later this decade, including NASA’s. $10 billion (£7.4 billion) from the James Webb Space Telescope and the super-sized European Extremely Large Telescope.

Next year, a test is expected to take place with a handful of dishes and antennas to ensure they can work together.

It is expected to be completed by the end of the decade, and the telescopes are expected to operate for more than 50 years.