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Crossing Continents

Professor Lyn Beazley Chief Scientist of Western Australia, Robin Boddington ICRAR,
Dr Bernard Bowen International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), John
Humphreys Chair of Australian SKA Industry Consortium, Dr Renu Sharma, General
Manager (ICRAR), Kerry Sanderson AO Agent General, Government of Western Australia,
Hon Helen Morton Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer, Government of Western Australia.

The International Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Forum 2010 was held in the Netherlands from 9-16 June 2010. Radio astronomers from many nations were joined by government representatives, industry and scientists to discuss the latest progress with the international SKA radio telescope project and its separate pathfinders in Australia/New Zealand and in South Africa and review the spin-off and other benefits. Two sites are being considered for the SKA, one in Western Australia/Australia/New Zealand and one in South Africa.

The message from Australia/WA and New Zealand at the forum was that we only have one opportunity to get this right. Thus the concept of a site that is “good enough” for the SKA is simply not ‘good enough’ when one is aiming to push the boundaries of human knowledge as far as possible. The Australian contingent’s message at the Forum was Maximum Discovery and highlighted the benefits of the core radio quiet site in the Murchison area of Western Australia. This radio quiet site then extends across Australia to New Zealand and allows an optimally configuration for the SKA in the core site.

The scale and vision of such a project is immense, not only from a scientific viewpoint (50 times the sensitivity and 10000 times the survey speed of the current generation of radio telescopes), but also the data and IT implications. In this regard the SKA will generate more data in one day that the whole planet produces each year, and in 2025 SKA will generate more data traffic than the entire internet in - in 2025. As a result technological developments are one of the key issues which will be focused on as the SKA is progressed.

In terms of spin-off benefits, briefings about the experience from other projects make it clear that there are likely to be significant technological breakthroughs as a result. With industry working alongside world’s top scientists to achieve the required outcomes the hope is to reduce the costs of technology. Just as materials developed for the space program now have a much wider application or the development and  invention of wi-fi but the CSIRO so to SKA’s discovers could have a positive reflection on everyday life.

You can find the presentation made by Brian Boyle, Director of the CSIRO and the SKA by following this link.