Work Begins in Western Australia on World's Most Powerful Radio Telescopes

Construction of the world's largest radio astronomy observatory, the Square Kilometre Array, has officially begun in Australia after three decades in development. From a report: A huge intergovernmental effort, the SKA has been hailed as one of the biggest scientific projects of this century. It will enable scientists to look back to early in the history of the universe when the first stars and galaxies were formed. It will also be used to investigate dark energy and why the universe is expanding, and to potentially search for extraterrestrial life. The SKA will initially involve two telescope arrays -- one on Wajarri country in remote Western Australia, called SKA-Low, comprising 131,072 tree-like antennas. SKA-Low is so named for its sensitivity to low-frequency radio signals. It will be eight times as sensitive than existing comparable telescopes and will map the sky 135 times faster. A second array of 197 traditional dishes, SKA-Mid, will be built in South Africa's Karoo region.

SKA Sucks

[t0qer]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

Re: SKA Sucks

[Anonymouse Cowtard]

No, Ska's the beat [youtu.be]!

Thwarted before it begins

[fermion]

By the Dyson sphere in progress called starlink

Re:

[LifesABeach]

curious.
for a little bit extra.
you can get h b o

Re:Thwarted before it begins

[ve3oat]

No, the various parts of SKA cover bands from 50 MHz to 14 GHz.
Lots of bandwidth and I am quite sure that the receivers will all have filters to block the transmissions from any Starlink satellite, as well as all the other comsats. wikipedia [wikipedia.org]

Movie rights

[q4Fry]

Hooray! Now The Dish [imdb.com] can have a sequel called The Metal Forest or something.

I thought this was already built

[stanbrown]

Interesting. First why is it (still) called the square kilometer array, since it is spread across 2 different continents now? Second I thought that construction on the SKA had started a number of years ago. Anyone know the history of this project?

Re:

[ve3oat]

"It" is still called SKA even though there are several separate SKAs in different places, with more being built, each with different capabilities. Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[hoofie]

It's been tested etc in Australia for a number of years. The Pawsey Supercomputer Center in Perth was built some years ago specifically for this.

The South African part of the system, if it's ever completed, will be wrecked within a year or two as that country is in freefall.

Nice and all, but

[backslashdot]

when are we putting one on the moon?

Re:

[Tablizer]

Putting Elon on the moon (one way) would be a better investment.