An artist's impression of the small dishes and focal plane arrays used in design of the Square Kilometre Array.
Credit: XiloStudios
Astronomers across Australia are breaking open the champagne to celebrate one of the biggest announcements in astrophysics: that Australia was one of the two finalists to host the world's largest radio telescope.
The International Square Kilometre Array Steering Committee announced on September 28 that Australia and South Africa had made the shortlist to host the planet's most powerful array. Bids by China and Argentina were unsuccessful, failing to meet the strict site requirements. A final decision will be made in 2008.
The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will cost A$1 billion to build and is expected to be operational by 2020. The advanced array would consist of thousands of radio dish antennas spread across the continent to create a 'virtual' dish thousands of kilometres in diameter. Though spread over more than 3,000 km, half of the antennas in the Australian SKA would be in a central 5 km by 5 km region in outback Western Australia.
The bigger the collecting area, the better scientists can see distant objects, including black holes, dark matter and other distant radio sources – including alien civilisations, whose faint radio transmissions might be leaking into space but are too weak to be detected with current instruments.
Instead of being able to tune into one point-source in the sky, SKA's very wide field of view allows the study of multiple targets at the same time - and in unprecedented detail and speed. And that's just the science.
A new industry is also emerging, with collaborative projects already under development by members of the international SKA consortium consisting of 17 nations, including the United States, Britain, France, The Netherlands, Sweden and India.
In Australia, a core consortium of about a dozen companies and institutions was formed in 2005 to drive industry involvement in the SKA project.
For Patrick Walsh and his family, the decision to shortlist the remote Australian cattle station they live on will go a long way to attracting new developments in the Murchison and Mid-West regions of Western Australia. In 2004 they sold Mileura station, which had been in their family for 119 years, to the state government, but stayed on as managers.
"We believe the SKA represents an excellent opportunity for the Murchison, for Western Australia and Australia," Walsh said. "Anything this big will only attract a lot more science and industry because it is cutting edge. Winning SKA is like winning the Olympics."
Bringing optic fibre and power generation would benefit outback communities, he said, as well as his own children who will be able to access the Internet and have communications infrastructure taken for granted by those in towns and cities.
His family's interest in the SKA project was linked to their love of the night sky at Mileura – a station named by an Aboriginal tracker and meaning, "see a long way", he said. The tracker was helping provide local knowledge to visiting scientists from around the world so that they could identify the best sites to conduct experiments in the lead up to the final SKA decision in 2008.
"I always say there is no reason why you can't have the cows and telescopes on the same site," he said. "Our cows are very friendly and very quiet, and they are feeding Australia."
When Cosmos learned of the shortlisting through its own sources - a week before the official announcement - approaches were made to the CSIRO (a key partner in the project) for comment. But Australia's national science agency declined to discuss the matter ahead of the official announcement lest it jeopardise Australia's chances of winning the project.
The announcement had originally been due to be made on October 5. But following enquiries from Cosmos, a decision was made to go public on September 28.
