SKA - An Aussie outback full of satellite dishes - A new outlook

IMAGINE being able to track the evolution of the universe, back to almost the beginning of space and time.
Enter the Square Kilometre Array or "SKA", the largest proposed telescope on Earth.
Soon to be - hopefully - located in the Australian outback.
Much like a palaeontologist digging down through the layers of earth, studying fossils and materials to determine the history of life on earth, the SKA will study the layers of gases and materials to determine how the universe came to be.
When it's built, the SKA will be 50 times larger than the world’s current largest radio telescope and comprise of over 3000 antennas or dishes scattered over a continent or more.

In total, it will span up 5500km. Half of those dishes will be in a central 5km by 5km region.
All the information from these will be brought together by the world’s fastest broadband network running at 100 terabytes per second - 10 times the equivalent of the world’s internet traffic today.

All that data will be brought to this central point, the world’s fastest super computer. It will run at one million million million operations per second or one ‘exabyte’.
The numbers might sound a bit unbelievable, but Dr Brian Boyle, CSIRO's SKA Director for Australia and New Zealand, told news.com.au it's an indication of the sheer size and quality of the information the SKA telescope will bring in.
“In more modern day terms, the total amount of current digital information is around 26 exabytes generated every year digitally in the world," he said.
"The SKA will generate two exabytes in a few days, and surpass the yearly amount in about one month.”
The decision on who gets the SKA is coming to a critical crossroads. The 20 countries actively taking part in the SKA project are hoping to form a legal governance body by the middle of 2011.
Then they'll decide whether to place it in either Western Australia or southern Africa. That decision will be made in 2012.
Dr Boyle said the final location will depend on factors that determine what will enable the best science to be done by the global community;
Radio quietness, for starters – it would be best to go somewhere without almost no radio interference.
“Australia has a large natural reserve of radio quietness because of such a low population density," Dr Boyle said.
"Our proposed central site for the SKA, Murchison Shire in the mid-west of Western Australia, is 50,000 square kilmetres, but has population of only 110 people, so its largely radio quiet.”
We also need space, one aspect Australia certainly doesn't lack.
And with the inclusion of New Zealand, the area available increases by almost 40%, making the information collected even clearer.
“Australia (also) has the infrastructure, we have a broadband research network that minimises the ‘last mile problem’ of getting the network to all these remote sites,” Dr Boyle said.
“We’ve also got more than half a century of tradition in radio astronomy with existing infrastructure; it’s around Australia already.”
Scientists, engineers, astronomers and cosmologists from all participating countries, including Australia, will not only help with the telescope’s development, but also its use.
“Australia I believe has the best scientific case to have the SKA sited in it, " Dr Boyle said, "but ultimately this is a global project."
"It has to be decided by collaboration not competition. Every nation that is involved with the SKA must have a net return.”
“This telescope will basically live on the web due to the scale, so it’s really a telescope for the world.”
So how far could the telescope see? How about the ability to look back to the beginning of time?
“The SKA will be the first radio telescope that will allow us to go back to that very first few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang and trace this history of gas, the gas from which the stars came throughout cosmic time,” Dr Boyle said.

“The SKA could see how the gas forms into stars and the stars into galaxies then also you’ll be able to look at some of the stars and watch the discs and material forming around them to make planets.”
Much of the technology that the SKA will use has yet to be invented, Dr Boyle said.
"The SKA is pushing the very boundaries of what is possible in the information technology area.
“We’re planning to use a super computer that hasn’t been built yet, so we have to work within the industry to develop those things.”

“It sounds strange but there is the classic example from back in the 1970s at CSIRO, a radio engineer was looking for black holes.

“He didn’t find but eventually his formulas and research went on to make Wi-Fi technology you’ll find in your laptop or mobile phone, so a lot of that technology came from radio astronomy.
“So it there another Wi-Fi in the SKA bank? I think you can bet on it.
"People ask me ‘What is the most important thing the SKA will discover?’ and my response is, if I can predict it, we aren’t being ambitious enough.”

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/technology/sci-tech/ska-telescope-a-new-view-of-the-outback/story-fn5fsgyc-1226027358795#ixzz1HTxWg0XJ