South Africa Wins Science Panel's Backing To Host SKA Telescope 117
ananyo writes "A scientific panel has narrowly recommended South Africa over Australia as the best site for the proposed Square Kilometre Array (SKA), an enormous US$2.1-billion radio telescope. While the project's member states have yet to make a final decision on where the telescope will go, the odds are now that the African bid will ultimately win out against the joint bid from Australia and New Zealand to host the project. The SKA radio telescope will be made up of some a 3,000 dishes, each 15 metres in diameter. The project will try to answer big questions about the early Universe: how the first elements heavier than helium formed, for example, and how the first galaxies coalesced. The telescope is so sensitive that it could even pick up television signals from distant worlds — something that might aid in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence."
Project security (Score:1, Interesting)
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And what exactly would be the point of building the LHC outside of europe?
The reason why the proposed sites for the SKA are SA and Australia is because the site needs to be radio quiet.
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Why isn't the LHC based in South Africa?
I don't know, because Switzerland is a much nicer place and because exporting petabytes of real-time data from Africa to Europe just isn't practical? It could also have something to do with geological stability. You don't want to have too many vibrations wherever you decide to build such a thing.
Re:Project security (Score:4, Interesting)
The southern hemisphere is better for radio astronomy and SETI. It has more interesting targets, including the most interesting nearby stars and the galactic center. Also, there are more radio telescopes in the northern hemisphere than in the southern hemisphere already, including Arecibo and the new 500 meter FAST dish being constructed in Southern China.
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Or you know, because the 27 km underground tunnel for the particle beams was already there?
The White Man's Burden (Score:1)
Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.
Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the m
What Sa has over Au ? (Score:3, Informative)
I don't have time to read TFA, so please tell us what SA has over Au?
We are talking about a project that worth BILLIONS, and that the structures (radar and all) must be kept in a place
I don't mean to be patronizing - but I just can't see how Sa can win over Au in term of safety
Or is PC --- as in Political Correctness --- an important criteria in choosing Sa over Au?
Re:What Sa has over Au ? (Score:5, Informative)
Think that covers it.
Re:What Sa has over Au ? (Score:5, Informative)
Better government support, SA government is paying some infrastructure costs like the fiber optics and is legally guaranteeing radio-quiet.
These points actually weigh in favour of the Australian bid: their National Broadband Network project ($40b of government-funded network infrastructure development) is being run out to Geraldton (closest town to the prospective SKA site). Both countries are legally guaranteeing radio-quiet zones - but, to be honest, I'd expect the legal enforcement environment in Australia to be more reliable than that in South Africa.
You missed one other point in favour of South Africa: higher altitude, which is important at higher radio frequencies. Although at lower frequencies, altitude doesn't make any difference, and the limiting atmospheric factor is the stability of the ionosphere (which is better at the Australian site).
Innovative telescope and equipment design being done by the South Africans is lowering the per-telescope cost significantly as well.
There's a lot of technology development going on in both countries. The South African pathfinder telescope (MeerKAT) is using Gregorian offset antennas, produced via some new process (hydroforming, I think), but the radio receivers are relatively conventional. The Australian pathfinder telescope (ASKAP) is using relatively conventional antennas, but has some new Phased Array Feed receivers which allow it to see 30x as much of the sky at one time. I think the new Australian receivers are potentially more game-changing, but riskier: the first set had unexpectedly high noise across half of their frequency band, which they're working on fixing with the second batch.
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The national broadband network is sure to be cancelled by the incoming government next election. It is an overpriced and unnecessary joke - entirely the wrong way of going about things.
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Save pennies to spend pounds.
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But calling people "niggers" is.
Re:What Sa has over Au ? (Score:5, Informative)
I think its more likely Australia's poor record at developing and capitalising on high-tech R&D.
Australia doesn't do high-tech. Look at Government policy for the last 20 years. Look at which companies in Oz actually do R&D. The poster child for Australian R&D is the CSIRO, and really they're the poster child because there is no-one else.
Then there is our Universities that are churning out business-types and lawyers but fewer and fewer scientists. So even if we wanted to start doing anything remotely high-tech, we don't have the people to do it - we'd need to import them. And there is a madness around these parts about letting immigrants into the country, fanned by the right-wing Opposition.
This isn't meant to be dismissive of the Australian proposal; it was very good and by all accounts so was the SA one. The plans for the supporting infrastructure was very impressive. But Australia has a reputation of only being interested in what we can dig out of the ground, not what we can use our brains for.
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Agree. Hopefully some pointy questions will get asked as to why Africa is seen as a better place to do science than Australia.
But then again we have arsewit politicians who will probably ignore the whole thing as geeks-only and therefore irrelevant and carry on backstabbing each other and doing an excellent impression of the monkey exhibit in a zoo... including the public masturbation and flinging of poo. /sigh
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The long Bush Wars provided a great generational base for science and very hi tech.
South Africa with some help created aerodynamic casings for its nuclear weapons, that puts in a rather unique list.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jindalee_Operational_Radar_Network [wikipedia.org] Australia's tech efforts at the same time
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Well I hear a lot of SA accents here in Perth, which usually means there's problems abroad (witness the huge numbers of Irish accents around too).
If there's one thing that Western Australia has got, it's vast enormous areas of completely uninhabited wilderness, you'd think perfectly suitable for this sort of thing. Clearly the SA bid was either technically superior or there was politics involved. Either way, we have arsewit politicians...
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But Australia has a reputation of only being interested in what we can dig out of the ground, not what we can use our brains for.
So just like SA then?
The big problem with SA is security. Any and all equipment will be stolen for scrap.
I knew a radar technician at an airport in SA who was on call one night when his radar stopped working. He went in to the control room and spent a couple of hours checking and eliminating possible electronic faults before finally going to look at the radar dish itself in a secure area half a mile away. When he got there he found that someone hod gotten through the security fences and stolen the rather
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.. so please tell us what SA has over Au?
Location. Australia is too far away, unless you live on it. And most people don't.
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The only highly-unstable country in Southern Africa is Zimbabwe and that idiot will die one day and hopefully peace will result. Namibia, Botswana, Mozambique, Zambia and Angola are all peaceful and stable. Above that, there are issues. At least we're not building nukes and toying with the world's trigger-fingers.
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Just going down the list of countries associated with South Africa's bid:
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South Africa certainly built nuclear weapons [wikipedia.org]. They're the only country to ever develop an independent nuclear arsenal and then choose to get rid of it.
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Calm down dumbass. When did I say anything about the rights or wrongs of South Africa having them, or South Africa getting rid of them?
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You don't make a decision like that without doing a thorough risk analysis.
They must have concluded that if it gets stolen there's an outside chance of capturing the perpetrator and getting it back, whereas if it's crushed in an earthquake, burned in a bushfire or washed away by a flood it's game over.
As an Australian, all I can say is - (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:As an Australian, all I can say is - (Score:5, Funny)
As a South African, I'll reply with -
"Bring it on Warnie-boy"
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Ooops, I guess South Africa wins... SAB just bought out Foster's Group.
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I can see it now. 3 minutes (roughly 3 deliveries) before the decision is due, the last two standing saffers on the committee will attempt an ill-judged debate-point, allowing Mark Waugh to underarm the proposal to Gilly at the other end for an easy counter-point and victory, thus beginning the decades-long tradition of South African choking at international business deals.
Why oh why did you send Alan Donald and Lance Kluesener as your delegates?? :D
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I disagree, but I'm not sure how to explain (Score:3, Interesting)
I will admit that I don't know the cultures of both places very well, but between the two...
Wouldn't you go with Australia based on population density alone? This is a radio telescope, something you want in someplace remote. You pick a square kilometer out in the middle of the outback, there's going to be like NO local interference. South Africa has approximately 40 times the population density, and they seem to be spread around the country a little more evenly than Australia.
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This is a radio telescope, something you want in someplace remote. You pick a square kilometer out in the middle of the outback, there's going to be like NO local interference. South Africa has approximately 40 times the population density, and they seem to be spread around the country a little more evenly than Australia
This is exactly what intriques me
I do not know what criteria that so-called "Science Panel" use - but for a radio telescope, the more remote the place, the less man-made radio signal there is, the better the location is
That is why I suspect PC --- as is Political Correctness --- forms a ***BIG*** part of the criteria
For Sa is mostly Blacks and Au is mostly Whites
Race does matter after all - in this 21st century science project
Re:I disagree, but I'm not sure how to explain (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I disagree, but I'm not sure how to explain (Score:5, Informative)
In most areas of South Africa, I would agree with you, but the Carnarvon site is so remote and inhospitable that it is regarded as one of the most radio-quiet places in the world. That combined with a law passed guaranteeing radio quiet in any designated area, such as the site, was part of the attraction.
Also, the engineers and scientists on our MeerKAT project team have come up with some very interesting technology [slashdot.org] to keep the farmers connected via cellular phones while keeping the site free from spillage. I get a sense that our chaps are "immature" who like to fiddle and innovate. And without the IP issues that plagues the West at the moment.
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At what level of qualifications, intelligence and experience does the immunity from influences such as political pressure, coercion and corruption kick in?
If you think knowing the right thing implies doing the right thing you're either hopelessly naïve or you're one of the extra terrestrials they're looking for.
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If you think knowing the right thing implies doing the right thing you're either hopelessly naïve or you're one of the extra terrestrials they're looking for.
While "knowing the right thing" isn't a sufficient condition for "doing the right thing", I think that most people here would understand that it's at least necessary.
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South Africa is a crappy shithole in Africa run by and inhabited mainly by the niggers.
I'm serious by the way.....it's a stupid idea.
Then why do you undermine your argument by using words like "niggers"? It doesn't make your argument any stronger; it just makes you look like a moron. Since you're too stupid to see that, people are going to assume you're also too stupid to analyze the actual pros/cons of the situation.
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Because I used to live in JoBerg until 1998 when my entire family fled after the 86yo woman who lived next door was raped to DEATH in her own lounge chair one sunny afternoon by the local NIGGER thugs and it was a common occurrence.
I'm sorry to hear that - but surely you don't think this was caused by melanin?
Look, I'm not saying there aren't plenty of bad people - of every race. Maybe there's a higher percentage in some races than others (though separating that effect from environment and income might be a statistical challenge), but even if there were it wouldn't justify PRE-JUDGING people based on a superficial characteristic.
The funny thing is...you talk to the average township black and they want Apartheid back, at least THEY had jobs, food, security and didn't have to worry about THEIR families being slaughtered at night either in the old days. But that doesn't fit in with your bullshit PC "all whites are bad" world view now, does it ?
I never said all whites are bad - I'm white, and I'm not bad!. Hell, I lean a little to the (US) right,
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Contact. (Score:1)
"The telescope is so sensitive that it could even pick up television signals from distant worlds â" something that might aid in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence."
It'll be Hitler's speech for the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
--
BMO
Re:Digital signal (Score:4, Insightful)
As long as it's above the noise floor, it would be recognizable. Not necessarily as TV, but as some sort of intentionally created signal. I doubt we'd be able to watch it though.
The real home run, though the odds are miniscule, would be if the timing works out that we pick up extraterrestrial signals right around the time that some other civilization is learning the basics of frequency modulated radio, so that they're just mapping frequencies of sound directly to frequencies of light. That would actually allow us to hear alien speech, which would obviously be amazing.
Of course, that assumes that they use verbal communication, and that their technology progresses similar to ours, and that the window of time that they used this technology (a couple centuries at most if they're similar to us) just so happens to fall in the time that we're listening, instead of millions of years before or after. So I'm not holding my breath, but it sure would be cool.
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The real home run, though the odds are miniscule, would be if the timing works out that we pick up extraterrestrial signals right around the time that some other civilization is learning the basics of frequency modulated radio, so that they're just mapping frequencies of sound directly to frequencies of light.
FM doesn't do that; perhaps you're thinking of AM or SSB?
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I did mean FM, though I didn't really express the idea properly. What I meant was that there was a direct transform from the received signal to a sound wave, as compared to digital modulation schemes which would only give us a meaningless string of bits. One can just take the frequency versus time graph, map it to voltage versus time, and plug it into a speaker.
I mentioned FM rather than AM only because I suspect it would arrive in better shape following an interstellar journey.
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It still might do ok in the right time slot.
Rumours are not facts... (Score:2)
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This isn't a rumour, it is a sub-recommendation feeding into the main decision. The recommendation that the physical site and associated costs are better for the South African bid is fact.
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Actually it *is* a rumor. There is no official statement. Who knows where the "leak" came from.
Because the SKA Servers were hacked? (Score:2)
An event such as this? [scmagazine.com.au]
TV and Intelligence? (Score:2)
The telescope is so sensitive that it could even pick up television signals from distant worlds â" something that might aid in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence."
God forbid they've received our terrestrial signals!
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There are many series that need better endings.
Yeah, let's hope they don't receive HBO's "The Sopranos".
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Unfortunately, they did not receive the final episode of "Single Female Lawyer"
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'God forbid they've received our terrestrial signals!'
I wonder what they would fear most, tv evangelicals or our science fiction?
Good to hear this. (Score:3, Insightful)
The continent of Africa, as a whole, is woefully underdeveloped for astronomy (like it is for lots of other things). Yes, South Africa has some decent stuff, like SALT, based on the Hobby-Eberley scope in Texas, which is quite large. And the Canaries have plenty of observatories near Africa, but they're under Spanish control. A SKA would probably include some outlying dishes one or even two countries removed from South Africa, which would help make science more visible in those countries as well. /Biased since I work in astronomy and am married to an African. ;)
One thing Africa has in its favor (Score:2)
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Not that light pollution has much to do with a radio telescope, but the night sky in outback Australia is pretty impressive too.
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Except you're too busy watching the ground for snakes to see the sky.
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Yep, I've seen some pretty dark darkness in rural parts of Kenya and Uganda, to be sure.
(Sucky places to get a flat tire, though, I must say.)
Depending on the country, there might be a fair bit of smoke in the air from people using wood for fuel, which would be a problem at certain wavelengths.
Not just South Africa (Score:1)
It's going to South Africa which is sort of stable due to the fact that it's filled with minerals but also an assortment of other African countries that switch between civil war and democracy every few years. I read an article in the Guardian a few months ago about how giving this project to Africa would show how great the future of Africa is. However when Africa needs stability more than anything and warlords and militias to cease to exist I fail to see how importing a bunch of white european scientists is
Radio Spectrum Pollution . . . ? (Score:3, Funny)
Just as light pollution is a problem for astronomers, Radio Spectrum Pollution is a problem for radio astronomers. Won't this be a big problem in South Africa?
With that constant drone of vuvuzelas, you can't hear a damn thing in that country.
SKA array, Meh.. (Score:1)
WAke me up when the Two Tone array goes in!
South Africa will easily win! (Score:1)
Arjen Rudd: [holds up his wallet] Diplomatic immunity! HA HA HA!
[Roger slowly rolls his head on his neck, takes aim, and fires - his bullet goes through Rudd's wallet, and then his head]
Roger Murtaugh: It's just been revoked!
Australia for the long view, SA for the short (Score:2)
If I were paying the bill, I would vote for South Africa due to the abundance of cheap labor available compared to Australia. Cheap labor is a huge advantage with such a huge construction project. You might even be able to import labor from a nearby country. OTOH, if I think in terms of centuries or millenia, I would vote for Australia due to its long term political stability, its physical isolation and its much greater size. Look back 100 (or even 10,000) years and ask yourself which country would be more
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I don't think that Chile would be a risk in the way that you describe. It already has a number of big, modern telescopes, such as Gemini South, the VLT(I) and ALMA, and had a a lot of smaller observatories during the Allende & Pinochet years. They're not really perceived as military targets.
(Disclaimer: I work at ALMA).
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Whenever I hear "abundance of cheap labor available" given as an advantage, I know the situation is not going to end well. Ever.
Add a few telescopes in Brazil too (Score:2)
I think they should add a few telescopes in northeastern Brazil too, as judged by looking at Google Earth.
The northeastern tip of Brazil would be a nice addition to the spiral mentioned in the article.
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For SETI/METI purposes Brasil is directly below some interesting targets such as Gliese 581. Just make sure the astronomers don't watch City of God before visiting. The language barrier could also be a problem. Not nearly as many people speak Portuguese as a second language as Spanish (or English).
The high humidity could also be a problem. Water vapor starts to attenuate signals after about 9-12 Ghz. Deserts, preferable high altitude deserts, are ideal. The Atacama Desert in Chile and the Plains of San Agus
I vote for South Africa (Score:2)
I know I have no vote in that matter. But if I could, I would vote for South Africa. For two reasons: First, it is a poor country with a growing problem in violence. The cause of that is the high unemployment rate and problems in the education system and the overall education. This is typical for countries where the wealth is distributed unequally. The same problems are known in China or Brazil or even the USA. Therefore, the telescope should go there because it will generate jobs there, it will increase th
Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Score:1)
"The telescope is so sensitive that it could even pick up television signals from distant worlds — something that might aid in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence."
I suspect that the intelligence of any society goes briefly upward upon inventing a television...and sharply downward as soon as something is actually broadcast to it.
I also suppose, however, that our own notion of what constitutes a "thinking man" ("sapiens") species prevents us from lowering the requirement of what's called "inte
But what if .... (Score:3)
Seriously, most technological societies will probably go through a very brief period where they broadcast megawatt signals all over their planet. Following their adoption of cellular, mesh and other similar low power systems, they will appear to 'go dark' in the RF spectrum to distant observers.
Now if we can pick up their power grid frequencies, that will be useful. Are they like us good Americans, using 60 Hz? Or commie socialist Europeans with 50 Hz?
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I dare say, you took my comment entirely too seriously! ;-)
Meh... (Score:2)
Call me when they decide where to put the Reggae telescope.
Build the SKA on the far side of the moon (Score:2)
1. Build a StarTram in the Himalayas.
2. Send all the aluminium struts and panels to the moon.
3. Build the SKA on the far side of the moon.
Cold temperatures. No atmosphere to get in the way. Most terrestrial interference would be blocked by the moon itself. Most frequencies that you might want to listen for are being blocked by the atmosphere. We have some atmospheric windows at 1-15 Ghz, 34 - 37 Ghz, and 73 - 77 Ghz and, aside from the visual spectrum, that's about it. Pathetic really. For all we know some
Put It On The Moon? (Score:2)
extraterrestial intelligence (Score:1)
Or remove all doubt that the extraterrestrial life is intelligent.
Sadly, the perfect location of Jamaica rejected (Score:2)
With deep roots going back to the late 50's, I am saddened that Jamaica was not selected.