Plans Unveiled for World


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Plans were unveiled Sunday for the Square Kilometer Array (SKA), a $2.1 billion array of telescopes that will be the largest and most sensitive radio telescope in the world -- and may help understand such fundamental cosmic mysteries as dark energy and why the universe is the way it is.

Signals from individual radios that make up the massive array of antennas, which is planned to cover one square kilometer of South African or Australian soil, will be combined to form one giant telescope. A decision on its final location will be made in 2012.

?The power of this new telescope project is going to surpass anything we?ve seen before, enabling us to see many more radio-emitting stars and galaxies and pulling the curtains wide open on parts of the great beyond that radio astronomers like me have only ever dreamt of exploring," said Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, prominent radio astronomer and president of the Institute of Physics, in a statement on the new plans.

"The Square Kilometer Array heralds in a post-Einstein era of physics that will help us take huge strides in our attempt to understand the most bizarre objects and the darkest ages of the Universe,? she said.

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good job, this will prove handy when we're communicating orders for corporate plunder of planets and moons in Alpha Centaury...sorry, another lame Avatar reference.

on a serious note, it'll prove useful, although we're soon going to deploy that big space telescore at the L1 point, if i'm not mistaken, which will be even better.

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there are plans for multpile radio telescopes of this magnitude at the moment, the Chile location is another one. i think the Arecibo array is either showing its age or it's simply not sufficient. can't wait for the Webb to launch, though!

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there are plans for multpile radio telescopes of this magnitude at the moment, the Chile location is another one. i think the Arecibo array is either showing its age or it's simply not sufficient. can't wait for the Webb to launch, though!

Yeah, I can't wait for the Webb launch either. Hopefully it won't slip much longer!

Arecibo is showing its age, but its mostly being repalced with scopes that work in parallel arrays vs super massive dishes.. Easier to scale up. Chile offers some of the clearest atmosphere ever and isn't quite as active as Hawaii! I have a 14" RC scope that i'm looking to build a remote observatory for and would love to get in @ Chile but may have to settle for NM since if anything goes wrong i can at least drive/fly there much cheaper :)

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New Mexico should be fine...not much pollution except for what drifts over from Cali, and very little light pollution. i envy you, you can afford to build a freakin observatory!

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A better system would be a space-based interferometer with a huge bae line - tens or hundreds of kilometers. You not only get higher resolution but are free from the atmosphere.

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A better system would be a space-based interferometer with a huge bae line - tens or hundreds of kilometers. You not only get higher resolution but are free from the atmosphere.

LISA

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New Mexico should be fine...not much pollution except for what drifts over from Cali, and very little light pollution. i envy you, you can afford to build a freakin observatory!

Chile would be just one of those "dream come true spots" but NM offers some great observing, just an early summer annoying monsoon season to deal with :)

I'm splitting a lot of the costs with my brother, but the most wallet breaking one will be pier/mount when we go fully remote.. If i had more money i'd invest in infrastructure to host it at lightbuckets but i can't afford his minimum requriements. Maybe global rent a scope to cover some of my costs at new mexico skies if they need another 14" RC to add to their "Farm"

LISA just got defunded :(

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2011/04/06/nasa-gives-up-on-lisa/

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LISA got defunded but it might, possibly, maybe, hopefully be taken on by ESA in a smaller scale. *crosses fingers* It's also a gravitational wave detecter, not radio.

Building a radio array on Earth actually makes more sense at the moment. The interference from human activities can be minimized using certain bands, as will building it in remote locations away from strong radio sources (the atmosphere is transparent to most radio waves, so that doesn't actually make a difference). Add on the cost of sending all of those satellites up to make the array, it just ends up being insanely expensive, especially when the money just isn't there right now.

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