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Bernie Fanaroff, SKA South Africa Project director, sitting in a control room in Pinelands, showing images of the Karoo site where South Africa will build the worlds most powerful telescope should it win the bid. Piicture: Cindy Waxa.

South Africa will know in one week if it is on track to building the world’s most powerful radio telescope.

SA and Australia are the final locations in the running to construct a mega-telescope called the SKA (Square Kilometre Array).

A week from February 1, a technical evaluation of both the SA and Australian sites will be submitted to SKA’s siting group. If the evaluation is a draw other aspects, including political factors, will play a role in the selection.

SKA South Africa Project director Bernie Fanaroff said SKA’s implications would be far-reaching. “The SKA will be able to show us pictures of the universe before the first stars were formed. It will change the way we see the universe and it will change the way the world sees South Africa,” he said.

SKA will cost more than R15 billion to build.

Italy, the UK, the Netherlands, China, New Zealand, Australia and SA are all on board for funding the preliminary stages of the project.

According to research published on SKA’s site, the SKA central computer will have the processing power of one billion PCs. Its ability to probe the edges of the universe will give astronomers insight into the formation and evolution of the first stars and galaxies after the Big Bang, the role of cosmic magnetism, the nature of gravity and possibly even life beyond Earth.

It will be so sensitive that it would be able to detect an airport radar on a planet 50 light years away.

Fanaroff said: “Think about how a CAT scan reads the human body – the SKA will be able to do this for the universe at different stages of the universe’s development.”

The proposed SA site is in a sparse region of the Karoo. If SA wins the bid, the deserted space will be filled with hundreds of satellite telescope dishes pointing towards the sky, dissecting our universe.

“In the short term, SKA will create jobs in construction and technical operations,” said Fanaroff.

“A total of 700 jobs have already been created. In the longer term it will help produce the skills required to be part of the global knowledge economy. It will help attract the world’s best scientists and engineers to South Africa, and it will educate young people in the field.” Already, the South Africa SKA Project has supported 320 post-doctoral fellows, post-graduate and undergraduate students completing science and engineering degrees and research.

A total of 57 bursaries have been awarded to people from other African countries including Kenya, Madagascar and Mauritius.

Regardless of whether or not SA wins the SKA bid, a prototype telescope called the Meerkat is in development for the Karoo location.

The Meerkat will have 64 dishes, making it the most powerful radio telescope in the southern hemisphere.

A seven-dish Meerkat precursor now stands in the Karoo, waiting to be exponentially grown by the addition of SKA, should SA win the bid.

“The Meerkat has changed the way we’re seen in the global scientific community. At first it was difficult to generate interest in the fellowship programme. In 2010 we had proposals from 500 different astronomers wanting to conduct research with Meerkat,” Fanaroff said.

The buzz caused by the Meerkat is an indication of how SKA would transform SA’s scientific standing.

On April 4 the SKA company, made up of representatives from the seven funding countries, will meet to make a final site decision.

Construction of the SKA mega-telescope will reach completion in 2024. - Cape Times