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CARNARVON, South Africa – A science megaproject to unlock the cosmic enigmas of dark energy and detect extraterrestrial life was boosted on Friday when the 64-antenna MeerKAT telescope was inaugurated in the remote Carnarvon in South Africa.
Built for a cost of R4.4 billion, MeerKAT will be incorporated into the complex instrument Square Kilometer Array (SKA), which, when it will be fully operational in the late 2020s, will be the most the largest and most powerful radio telescope in the world.
Up to 3,000 dishes co-hosted in Africa and Australia will be able to scan the sky 10,000 times faster with 50 times the sensitivity of any other telescope and produce images exceeding the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope.
"MeerKAT will address some of the key scientific questions of modern astrophysics – how did galaxies form, how do they evolve, how did we come here … and for these purposes MeerKAT is Fernando Camilo, chief scientist at the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory who built and operates the telescope.
At an inauguration in the presence of government officials and foreign dignitaries, Camilo published new images taken by MeerKAT of the region surrounding the supermbadive black hole in the center of the Milky Way, some 25,000 light-years away
"We did not expect to use our telescope so early in the game, this is not the case. is not even optimized, but to turn it to The center of the galaxy and get these amazing images, the best in the world, tells you that you have done something good, better than just, "he told Reuters.), co nstruct in the vast semi-desert region of Karoo north of Cape Town to demonstrate South Africa's ability to host the SKA. His name is a play on words: in Afrikaans, "meer" means "plus", as in "more KAT", but it also refers to the small mammal native of Karoo and famous for his hind legs to see the world.
In addition to groundbreaking research in astronomy, MeerKAT is pushing the boundaries of big data and high performance computing, helping IBM to develop systems capable of handling the staggering amount of data transmitted by each antenna to buried supercomputers underground.
The largest radio telescope of this type in the southern hemisphere, MeerKAT looks like a cluster of eggs when you see it for the first time an hour away from Carnarvon
. as high as a three-story building, turning on a fixed pedestal while it sweeps the sky. Chosen because of its remoteness, with hills providing an additional shield against radio interference, the project site is the main African base for hundreds of antennas that will eventually be placed up to Kenya and South Africa. in Ghana.
"The first phase of SKA 1 in South Africa is to add 133 antennas to that (of MeerKAT)," said Rob Adam, a member of the SKA International Board of Directors.
The expansion is expected to begin next year, said Adam, with the first prototype built in China at the site about 450 kilometers north of Cape Town in the Northern Cape Province. MeerKAT will work independently before being incorporated into SKA 1 around 2023, said Adam.
Reuters
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