More powerful than Hubble, the MeerKAT radio telescope inaugurated in South Africa

Scientists have made another important step toward the search for extraterrestrial life in the universe. A 64-antenna MeerKAT telescope was recently inaugurated in Carnarvon, South Africa, to help solve some of the mysteries of the universe.

The radio telescope, built with 4.4 billion rand, will soon be incorporated into the telescope. Square Kilometer Array complex instrument (SKA). The telescope will be fully operational in the 2020s and once that is done, it will become the largest and most powerful radio telescope in the world.

After the establishment of MeerKAT, nearly 3000 dishes located around Africa and Australia sky successfully 10,000 times faster and it will get 50 times more sensitivity than existing telescopes . It will also be able to generate spatial images, which will eclipse even the resolution quality of those from the Hubble Space Telescope, SKA scientists said.

"MeerKAT will address some of the key scientific questions of modern astrophysics – how do galaxies form, how do they evolve, how did we come here … and for these purposes, MeerKAT is the best to the world, "said Fernando Camilo. Camilo is the chief scientist of the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory. The same organization that built and now will operate the telescope.

At the inauguration, Camilo also revealed some new images taken by MeerKAT. The images are from the region, which is about 25,000 light-years away, surrounding the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way.

"We did not expect to use our telescope so early in the game, it's not even optimized, but to turn it to the center of the galaxy and get those amazing images, the best in the world, tells you that you did something good, better than just, "Camilo told Reuters.

Breaking astronomical research, MeerKAT also adds to the field of big data and high performance computing. IBM is developing highly advanced systems capable of handling the astronomical amount of data from antennas to supercomputers buried under the ground to avoid radio interference as much as possible.

"The first phase of SKA 1 in South Africa is to add 133 antennas to that (of MeerKAT)," informed Rob Adam, a member of SKA 's international board of directors.