Great telescope project

Australia and South Africa - which nation will own one of the great science projects of the 21st century. These are the remaining two candidates in the race to acquire the right to install a new generation radio telescope system. Giant - Square Kilometer Array (SKA).

The SKA system of thousands of antennas longer than 3,000 km will ' sweep ' the sky to find solutions to ' thorny ' problems in astronomy such as the early cosmological survey, the weighting theory test. Einstein's forces and even seek extraterrestrial life. The goal of the project is to create a telescope with a range of about 1 million square meters - equivalent to 200 football fields.

The two best locations that meet the technical requirements of SKA are Mileura station in Western Australia and Karoo state of South Africa . However, researchers are considering because the SKA requires such a large area that the antenna system will have to encroach to neighboring countries because no country can afford to carry it alone. The main technical requirement for the installation site is to have extremely low levels of artificial radio signals because the interference condition will overwhelm the cosmic radio waves which are inherently weak - the target that the telescope targets. . Therefore, the country that won the right to install SKA will have to limit mobile phone and television waves.

The final model of SKA has been adopted. (Photo: BBC)

The final technology in SKA's design and configuration has been adopted, but only about 50% of the selected area is in a country. SKA vehicles, hundreds to thousands of kilometers away, will send data back and then be combined with central station data. This process is known as the astronomical interferometer which is currently widely used. SKA will spy on light sources in the sky which can emit wavelengths ranging from a few centimeters to even meters.

However, SKA has a very good speed of touch, many times more than current telescopes . This allowed the SKA to detect hydrogen gas on the first stars and the galaxy formed after the Big Bang. SKA will pinpoint the location of the nearest hundred million galaxies and hope to uncover new details about ' dark energy ' - a secret pressure that is pushing the universe apart at a rate of day. the higher.

The SKA telescope will also map the impact of the magnetic field on the development of stars and galaxies. SKA will enlarge faint stars - dying stars emit radio signals that sweep across the Earth. Astronomers think these objects may be an important factor to test Einstein's theory of gravity. SKA will also explain the existence of extraterrestrial life.

The first SKA parts will appear on the Internet in 2014 and the complete antenna system will be operational by 2020. The cost of implementing SKA is estimated at 1.3 billion euros.

N.MINH