Square Kilometre Array, world’s largest radio telescope

Shashank Raj Gupta
Square Kilometre Array, world’s largest radio telescope

Question: Square Kilometre Array, the world’s largest radio telescope is being setup in which of the following pair of countries?
a) India- Australia
b) Japan- India
c) South Africa- Australia
d) USA- UK
Answer: (c)
Related Facts:-

  • On 04 February 2021, SKAO Council in its maiden meeting has approved the establishment of the world’s largest radio telescope.
  • It should be known that the SKAO stands for the Square Kilometre Array Observatory.
  • The Square Kilometer Array is an intergovernmental radio telescope project that is being built in Australia and South Africa.
  • SKAO also represents a new intergovernmental organisation dedicated to radio astronomy and is headquartered in the UK.
  • At the moment, organisations from ten countries are a part of the SKAO.
  • These include Australia, Canada, China, India, Italy, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden, the Netherlands and the UK.
  • Unlike optical telescopes, radio telescopes can detect invisible gas and, therefore, they can reveal areas of space that may be obscured by cosmic dust.
  • It is to be noted that, the first radio signals from outer space were significantly, detected by physicist Karl Jansky in the 1930s.
  • Since then Astronomers have used radio telescopes to detect radio waves emitted by different objects in the universe and explore it.
  • According to NASA, the field of radio astronomy evolved after World War II and became one of the most important tools for making astronomical observations since.
  • The Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico, which was the second-largest single-dish radio telescope in the world, collapsed in December 2020.
  • The Arecibo telescope was built in 1963 and because of its powerful radar; scientists employed it to observe planets, asteroids and the ionosphere.
  • Scientists made several discoveries with Arecibo telescope over the decades, including finding prebiotic molecules in distant galaxies, the first exoplanets, and the first-millisecond pulsar.
  • About the SKA telescope:-
  • The Square Kilometer Array telescope proposed to be the largest radio telescope in the world.
  • It will be located in Africa and Australia, and whose operation, maintenance and construction will be overseen by SKAO.
  • The completion is expected to take nearly a decade at a cost of over £1.8 billion.
  • The important information to be revealed using SKAO:-
  • Some of the included questions that scientists hope to address using this telescope are-
  • How the universe began to form?
  • When and how the first stars were born?
  • The life-cycle of a galaxy.
  • Exploring the possibility of detecting technologically-active civilisations elsewhere in our galaxy.
  • Understanding where gravitational waves come from.

By – Rajesh Tripathi

Links:-
https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-what-is-square-kilometre-array-the-worlds-largest-radio-telescope-7174881/
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-55933958