Telkom "optimistic" on telescope ska project A process to provide high-speed optic-fibre connections to the Southern African Large Telescope (Salt) in the Karoo is in progress, Telkom said on Sunday.
SKA telescope to provide a billion PCs' worth of processing Two technologies currently under research by IBM may hold the key to processing and storing the exabyte (10^18) of data expected to flow per day from the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope project.
SA urged to back telescope bid South Africans should get behind the bid to build the world's biggest radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), in the same way they lobbied to host the 2010 Soccer World Cup, parliament's science and technology portfolio committee heard on Wednesday.
NZ joins Australia in $3.1bn megascience bid The joint transtasman joint cabinet meeting today saw John Key agree to back Kevin Rudd's pet project: the space telescope Square Kilometre Array project - a megascience project in the same league as the Large Hadron Collider and the International Space Station.
Australia and New Zealand have made a joint bid to host the world's most powerful radio telescope, a $2.5 billion device which could one day help unlock the secrets of the universe.
Australia and New Zealand have joined forces to bid for a multibillion dollar international radio telescope. New Zealand's Economic Development Minister Gerry Brownlee and Australia's Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Senator Kim Carr, signed the agreement today in Sydney.
The first dish for South Africas prototype KAT-7 radio telescope array has been mounted on its pedestal in the Northern Cape, roughly 100 km west of the small town of Carnarvon. KAT stands for Karoo Array Telescope, while the numeral 7 indicates the number of dishes which will form the instrument. The KAT-7 dishes are each 12 m in diameter, manufactured from composites, and mounted on a simple steel framework. Hitherto, all radio telescope dishes have been made entirely from metal. The use of composites is an attempt to significantly reduce the cost of the dishes.
South Africa has spent R258 million since 2003 to date on securing the 1.5 billion euro Square Kilometre Array (SKA), which, when built, will be the world's largest radio telescope, says the Department of Science and Technology (DST). The DST says R23 million of this has gone to a number of South African universities for bursaries, postdoctoral fellowships and grants to promote radio astronomy.
Within its first week of operation, the world's most powerful telescope will generate more information than "the total amount of words ever spoken by humanity", says CSIRO astronomer, Brian Boyle. Australia is competing with South Africa to host the $3 billion radio telescope - the Square Kilometre Array - which will consist of about 2000 dishes, each about 12 metres wide, if built in the Western Australian desert near Geraldton.
Australia is a candidate for hosting the largest radio telescope in the world. This project has a value of over 2 billion EURO and Italy will be involved both in the scientific area, led by the National Institute of Astrophysics and in the industrial one with the collaboration of the Finmeccanica Group. Read more
New Zealand and Australia are in the running to be at the forefront of the world's premier radio telescope project - the Square Kilometre Array Radio Telescope Project (SKA). As part of the project, a series of about 5000 telescopes covering a total area of one square kilometre will be constructed between 2012 and 2020 across either Australasia or Southern Africa. The host location will be decided by early 2012.