Dishing up the universe’s secrets

REUTERS

Star trails form over radio telescope dishes of the KAT-7 Array in a long-exposure picture taken at the proposed site for the Square Kilometre Array telescope near Carnavon in the Northern Cape. Last week South Africa won the rights to locate about 70 percent of the SKA telescope, which will be the worlds largest radio telescope when completed. Picture: REUTERS

There is no question that the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project, with SA as its majority partner, will have a huge scientific impact internationally and as South Africans we should be very proud to play a leading role in this world-class project.

The Square Kilometre Array Organisation announced last Friday that SA would host the telescope project jointly with Australia.

As the majority partner, SA is set to host two out of the three antenna sites in collaboration with eight other African countries. This project will involve the construction of 3 000 dishes, which will operate in unison to become the most sensitive radio telescope in the world by 100-fold.

The SKA will be used to construct a picture of the cosmos in radio waves. Because light travels at a fixed speed, the light from distant celestial objects that we detect here on Earth today was emitted in our distant past, allowing astronomers to effectively look back in time.

By observing our universe at radio frequencies, which go beyond the range of the human eye, we are able to look through clouds of dust that usually obscure our view, and see into the very distant past when the first objects began to form in the universe.

The key scientific objectives of the project are by no means humble. With the SKA, we will be able to study galaxies at much greater distances than we have been able to reach thus far, giving us a new perspective on how galaxies build up and how the structures that we see on large scales come to form.

By studying how massive groups of galaxies distort the paths of radio waves on their way to Earth, we can learn about “dark energy”, the unseen entity that is responsible for the accelerated expansion of the universe that we measure today.

The SKA will also be powerful enough to detect faint ripples in the fabric of space and time through very precise astronomical clocks called pulsars – which are very rapidly spinning stars – and in this way, study the very earliest moments in time. By monitoring these pulsars, we will for the first time be able to test Einstein’s theory of gravity under extreme conditions, find black holes and learn about their nature. Even more exciting will be the ability of the SKA to detect radio signals from other intelligent forms of life that may exist elsewhere in the universe.

Because of its great size, the SKA will be able to detect these extremely weak signals, provided we are smart about knowing where to point this telescope. The fact that several Nobel prizes for physics have been awarded to radio astronomers is a testament to the importance of radio astronomy in the human endeavour to answer the most important questions about our universe.

The SKA project will bring significant international investment to SA. With a building cost estimated to be about R25 billion and the running costs of about 10 percent of that per year for 30 years, we can expect a notable boost to SA’s economy.

Furthermore, the substantial investment that our government has made in astronomy over the past few years will certainly pay off in terms of human capacity development. Given that astronomy is a “hi-tech” discipline, hosting and leading a project of this magnitude will draw heavily upon human resources from various sectors of both industry and academia.

In addition to needing well-trained astronomers to conduct the science and engineers with the expertise to build the instrumentation, this data-intensive operation will require experts in information and communication technology to store and process the huge volumes of data, and technologists and technicians to maintain the operations and oversee upgrades, all of whom will be drawn from the SA community at large. As a bonus, we can also expect a huge boost in our internet capacity.

This does not only imply the creation of many new jobs, but it will lead to a dramatic increase in the demand for skilled workers which will fuel the growth of a knowledge-based economy.

SA’s selection to play a part in the leadership of this international collaboration will certainly raise the profile of the SA astronomy community. The country will head a global community of researchers and we can expect an influx of world-class experts into our country, who will strengthen the pool of academics involved in the training of the next generation of South Africans.

The SKA project will also make huge strides in terms of promoting the study of science and mathematics to school pupils. Never before has astronomy been more written and talked about among South Africans and is now synonymous with research at the cutting edge. This will go a long way to making astronomy and related technologies an attractive career path for young talented pupils at the end of their school careers.

SA universities will play a major role in training large numbers of undergraduate and postgraduate students to tackle the vast scientific and technological challenges presented by the SKA project.

Astronomy graduates will benefit greatly from the transferable skills that a higher education in mathematics or science affords, and will be highly prized in the engineering, technology and business sectors.

l Professor Kavilan Moodley is a lecturer in the School of Mathematics, Computer Science and Statistics, and a researcher in the Astrophysics and Cosmology Research Unit at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

l Dr Caroline Zunckeld is a lecturer in the School of Chemistry and Physics and a researcher in the Astrophysics and Cosmology Research Unit at UKZN.