• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

The SKA Observatory Is Set To Revolutionize Astronomy – We Visited For A Glimpse Into The Future

December 17, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

The 2020s are certainly roaring when it comes to astronomy. The launches of JWST and eROSITA have brought incredible new insights into infrared and X-ray astronomy respectively. More revolutionary observatories are coming online soon, such as the Extremely Large Telescope in 2028 and the Square Kilometer Array Observatory (SKAO) in just two years.

SKAO will dramatically expand what we know about the universe in radio waves, bringing forth new discoveries about galaxies, black holes, the universe as a whole, and the search for life beyond Earth. This international collaboration is a megaproject that will see two large observatories built in South Africa and Australia.

Advertisement

It covers everything from how the Universe began to how galaxies form and evolve

Dr Wendy Williams

IFLScience visited the South African site, which is growing from the already revolutionary MeerKAT telescope. Called SKA-Mid, the observatory is in a radio quiet zone, where no artificial radio emission of any kind is allowed. With our phones turned off and packed in special protective bags, we saw the construction at hand, glimpsing at the future of this extraordinary instrument.

It will be composed of 197 steerable antennae, with the maximum distance between two of them being 150 kilometers (93 miles). The new radio dishes are a bit larger than the original ones from MeerKAT, measuring 15 meters (49 feet) across. They are each made of 66 individual panels aligned with such precision (with an average surface accuracy between 0.010 and 0.030mm) to create an incredibly smooth collecting surface. That’s thinner than a human hair!



In Australia, SKA-Low will instead have 131,072 antennae, each about 2 meters (6.6 feet) tall, that look a bit like Christmas trees. The wire antennae look dramatically different from the traditional radio dishes, but they are more efficient at observing lower radio frequencies. These antennae will see all the observable sky at once. Clever data analysis will deliver phenomenal observations from both sites – there is going to be a lot of new science.

Advertisement

“It covers everything from how the Universe began to how galaxies form and evolve,” Dr Wendy Williams, a project scientist working for SKAO, told IFLScience. “What I’m particularly excited about is the ability to map large areas of the sky with the instruments, both [SKA-]Low and Mid; map out how many galaxies are there, how many supermassive black holes are there, and see how these processes evolve and change with time.”

With so many antennae performing these high-quality observations, both observatories will be delivering an extraordinary amount of data. For example, SKA-Low will transmit data at 7.2 terabits per second, thousands of times faster than high-end commercial transmission. And it is necessary.

“Even with the current Pathfinder telescopes 3 seconds of our data is 10 percent of the whole internet’s annual network data rate so that’s how much data we’re processing every second,” Former Science Team Member Dr Hao “Harry” Qiu, explained further. “With the SKAO we need to find smarter ways to deal with data and this will pass on in information technology to all kinds of other fields.”

The SKAO first light is expected in 2027. Construction at both sites is ramping up, ready to give humanity an incredible new way to study the cosmos.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Apple Maps rolls out 3D view to London, L.A., New York, and San Francisco
  2. Police investigate after Ukrainian lawmaker, 33, dies in taxi
  3. Roman Military Camps In Arabia Spotted Using Google Earth, Suggesting Desert Conquest
  4. The World’s Largest Offshore Wind Farm Is Looking To Grow Even Further

Source Link: The SKA Observatory Is Set To Revolutionize Astronomy – We Visited For A Glimpse Into The Future

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • This Mini Dragon Is One Of The World’s Rarest Amphibians With Just 150 Individuals Living In One Lake
  • “Alien Mothership” Hypothesis About To Have Key Test As Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS Hits Solar Conjunction And Perihelion
  • 18 Of These Rare Mammals Live In The Wild. Have We Reached A Turning Point In Their Return To The US?
  • How Comet 2P/Encke Caused “Halloween Fireballs” To Rain Down On The Earth
  • US Flight Potentially Hit By Space Debris – What Are The Chances That The Claim Is Correct?
  • Hormone Therapy For Trans Women Shifts Dozens Of Proteins To Align With Their Gender Identity
  • People Are Not Reacting Well After Learning How Cranberries Are Grown
  • The World’s Newest Great Ape Is Also Its Rarest, With Fewer Than 800 Left In The Wild
  • IFLScience We Have Questions: Can Burying Scientists Alive In The Snow Help Us Protect Polar Bears?
  • Scientists Perplexed By 407-Million-Year-Old Fossilized Plant That Doesn’t Follow The Fibonacci Sequence
  • This Giant Goldfish Hybrid Weighs As Much As A 10-Year-Old – A Stark Warning About Dumping Pets
  • Scientists Gave Mice Neanderthal And Denisovan Genes. The Results Were Intriguing
  • 2024 Saw Higher Levels Of Carbon Dioxide In The Atmosphere Than Ever Before
  • Halloween Fireballs Will Grace Our Skies As The Taurid Meteor Showers Arrive
  • Newly Discovered Hunting Megastructures Suggest Pre-Bronze Age Societies More Sophisticated Than Previously Thought
  • What Is Spectroscopy And Why Is It So Important To Science?
  • Parkinson’s “Trigger” Seen For The First Time: Scientists Image The Toxic Molecules Inside The Human Brain
  • What Flying Animals Exist That Are Not Birds?
  • DNA Evidence Uncovers Surprising Origins Of Native Americans
  • Single Gene Swap “Transfers A Behavior” Between Two Species For The First Time
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version