Giant telescope to help tackle mysteries of the universe

Amsterdam:  A giant radio telescope made up of thousands of separate dishes and intended to help scientists answer fundamental questions about the make-up of the universe will be built and based in both Australia and South Africa, the international consortium overseeing the project announced yesterday.

The Square Kilometre Array telescope will be 50 times more sensitive and scan the sky 10,000 times faster than any existing telescope. Not a long tube with an eye piece, the telescope is instead a huge collection of dishes with a combined surface area of one square kilometre that don't all have to be in the same place.

John Womersley, chair of the consortium's board, said the telescope will help scientists answer key questions: "Where do we come from? Where are we going? What is this universe we live in?"

"We don't understand what 96 per cent of our universe is made of," he said.

The organisation, made up of scientific organisations from around the world, said in a statement that dividing construction of the telescope will "maximise on investments already made by both Australia and South Africa".

The decision appeared to be a compromise as Australia and New Zealand had been vying with South Africa for the honour of hosting the €1.5 billion (Dh6.9 billion) telescope, which will be made up of some 3,000 separate 15-metre diameter dishes.

Most of the dishes built in the first phase of construction, scheduled to start in 2019, will be in South Africa, the organisation said.

Womersley said that splitting construction between the two nations will likely add around 10 per cent to the €350 million ($439 million) cost of the first phase of building the giant telescope.

Astronomers

But he said there would be a pay-off for astronomers.

"It delivers more science in phase one. The capabilities of this instrument are greater than the original design," Womersley said.

South Africa's science minister, Naledi Pandor, said the decision to split the project, with one of three components in Australia and the remaining two in Africa, was a surprise. She said an assessment had shown Africa was the best site, and that the goal had been to find a single site.

But, she added, "we accept the compromise in the interest of progress and as an acknowledgement, we believe of the sterling work done by our scientists and the excellent SKA team."