Derek Taylor
South Africa is back in the bidding for the R21 billion Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project to host the world’s biggest radio telescope – powerful enough to look back to the creation of the universe, scientists believe.
A leak from the scientific panel making the preliminary selection between competitive SA and Australian-New Zealand bids has informed members of the ANZ team that SA is leading on projected costs of the project, which is designed to run for 50 years and involves an extra R5bn running cost.
This follows a leaked report from the SKA scientists’ panel a month ago saying the ANZ bid was ahead in the process.
SA began the bidding contest with much sympathy from the European members of the 20 countries financing the main costs of the SKA project.
But the ANZ team contended that the West Australian array of radio telescope discs was technically superior in its east-west array ending in New Zealand.
Intense lobbying by both teams during the past six months has focused on two contentions: SA’s lower labour and construction costs and Australia’s greater skills pool and stability as a developed nation. Australia also offers an existing broadband optic fibre data transmission circuit, stretching from its west coast base all the way to New Zealand. And the ANZ team claims that a super-computer 10 times more powerful than the world’s existing best is already being built.
The data collection demands of the SKA project are record-breakingly immense. One comparison says they will be the equivalent of processing a year of all the world’s electronic data movements in one day – each day.