Turning the moon into an Ultra-High-Energy (UHE) cosmic ray detector

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) to be used to detect Ultra-High-Energy (UHE) cosmic rays.

Credit: University of Southampton

Scientists from the University of Southampton are to turn the Moon into a giant particle detector to help understand the origin of Ultra-High-Energy (UHE) cosmic rays - the most energetic particles in the Universe.

The origin of UHE cosmic rays is one of the great mysteries in astrophysics.

Nobody knows where these extremely rare cosmic rays come from or how they get their enormous energies.

Physicists detect them on Earth at a rate of less than one particle per square kilometre per century.

Dr Justin Bray, a Research Fellow in Cosmic Magnetism at the University of Southampton, is lead author of a proposal to use the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), set to become the largest and most sensitive radio telescope in the world, to detect vastly more UHE cosmic rays by using the Moon as a giant cosmic ray detector.

On Earth, physicists detect these high-energy particles when they hit the upper atmosphere triggering a cascade of secondary particles that generate a short and faint burst of radio waves only a few nanoseconds long.

It is this signal that astronomers hope to pick up from the Moon, but as these signals are so short and faint no radio telescope on Earth is currently capable of picking them up.

With its large collecting area and high sensitivity, the SKA will be able to detect these signals using the visible lunar surface, millions of square kilometres, giving the researchers access to more data about UHE cosmic rays than they have ever had before.

The current largest detector on Earth is the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina that covers an area of 3,000 square kilometres, about the size Luxembourg.

The SKA will be more than 10 times larger (33,0000 square kilometres) and researchers hope to detect around 165 UHE cosmic rays a year from the Moon compared to the 15-a-year currently observed.

Dr Bray announced details of the project at a major SKA conference in Italy.

He says: "Cosmic rays at these energies are so rare that you need an enormous detector to collect a significant number of them, but the moon dwarfs any particle detector that has been built so far."

"If we can make this work, it should give us our best chance yet to figure out where they're coming from."

Anna Scaife

Dr Bray is working with Professor Anna Scaife, also from Physics and Astronomy at the University of Southampton, who leads the development of the SKA's Imaging Pipeline as part of the Science Data Processor (SDP) work package consortium.

Professor Scaife says: "Defining science goals for the telescope is crucial for ensuring that the appropriate technical capabilities are considered during the design phase."

Using a network of radio antennas in the Southern hemisphere, the SKA will advance our understanding of how the Universe evolved and challenge Einstein's theory of relativity.

With receivers across Australia and Africa, its dishes and antennas will provide detailed information on the large scale 3D structure of the Universe.

When operational in the early 2020's, the SKA radio telescope will produce more than 10 times the current global traffic of the Internet in its internal telecommunications system.

To play back a single day's worth of SKA data on an MP3 player would take about two million years.

Swirling electrons in the whirlpool galaxy

LOFAR radio map of the whirlpool galaxy M51 and its neighbourhood at a frequency of 150 MHz. 

The field covers 4 by 2.6 degrees. 

The observations were performed with the Dutch LOFAR high-band antennas. 

The map shows the distribution of hot electrons in M51 and also a large number of background galaxies.

The inlay shows an enlarged view of M51 at 150 MHz (white contour lines) overlayed onto an optical image of M51 from the Digital Sky Survey (DSS). 

Credit: © David Mulcahy et al., Astronomy & Astrophysics

The whirlpool galaxy Messier 51 (M51) is seen from a distance of approximately 30 million light years.

This galaxy appears almost face-on and displays a beautiful system of spiral arms.

A European team of astronomers was able to observe M51 with the International LOFAR Telescope in the frequency range 115-175 MHz, just above the normal commercial FM radio frequency band of 88-108 MHz.

The team obtained the most sensitive image of any galaxy at frequencies below 1 GHz so far.

With LOFAR's high sensitivity, the disk of M51 in the radio regime could be traced much further out than before.

The astronomers detected cosmic electrons and magnetic fields 40,000 light years away from the center of M51.

With LOFAR's high angular resolution, the spiral arms are clearly visible. Magnetic fields and cosmic rays are densest in spiral arms.

Compared to higher radio frequencies, spiral arms appear broader due to the diffusion of cosmic electrons away from the spiral arms where they have been formed.

The view of galaxies in the radio regime is different to their optical appearance. Whereas optical images show predominantly the visible light from stars, the radio waves unravel two constituents of galaxies that are invisible to optical telescopes: electrons, almost as fast as light, and magnetic fields.

Their role for the stability and evolution of galaxies is increasingly under discussion. The electrons are "cosmic ray" particles produced in the shock fronts of giant supernova explosions. Magnetic fields are generated by dynamo processes driven by gas motions.

When the electrons spiral around the magnetic field lines, radio waves are emitted, a process called synchrotron emission. Its intensity increases with the number and energy of the electrons and with magnetic field strength.

For many decades, radio astronomy has been unable to explore low frequencies below 300 MHz because the ionosphere acts as a barrier of low-frequency radio waves (which are completely blocked below about 10 MHz).

Sophisticated methods of data processing and superfast computers are needed to recover the emission.

Due to these technical challenges, spiral galaxies have hardly been studied before at these very low radio frequencies. The only observations were of poor resolution and no details could be made out.

LOFAR Stations in Europe. 

Credit: © ASTRON, The Netherlands

The target of investigation in David Mulcahy's PhD project was the beautiful spiral galaxy Messier 51 at a distance of about 30 million light years which is visible already in a small telescope in the constellation "Canes Venatici", not far away from the famous Big Dipper (in German: "Großer Wagen") in the sky.

"Low-frequency radio waves are important as they carry information about electrons of relatively low energies that are able to propagate further away from their places of origin in the star-forming spiral arms and are able to illuminate the magnetic fields in the outer parts of galaxies", says David Mulcahy.

"We need to know whether magnetic fields are expelled from galaxies and what their strength is out there."

"This beautiful image, coupled with the important scientific result it represents, illustrates the fantastic advances that can be made at low radio frequencies with the LOFAR telescope", continues Anna Scaife from Southampton University, co-author of the paper.

"Unravelling the mysteries of magnetic fields is crucial to understanding how our Universe works."

"For too long, many of the big questions about magnetic fields have simply been untestable and this new era of radio astronomy is very exciting."

The Low Frequency Array (LOFAR), designed and constructed by ASTRON in the Netherlands, is a brand new radio telescope giving access to very low radio frequencies.

LOFAR explores the relatively unexplored frequency range below 240 MHz and consists of a multitude of small and simple antennas without moving parts.

LOFAR consists of 38 stations in the Netherlands, 6 stations in Germany and one station each in the UK, France and Sweden.

The novelty is the online combination of the signals from all stations in a powerful computing cluster located at the University of Groningen (Netherlands).

Observations of M51 with LOFAR below FM radio frequencies (at 30-80 MHz) have already taken place.

"This opens a new window to the Universe where we do not know how galaxies will look like", concludes Rainer Beck, who supervised David Mulcahy's PhD project.

"Maybe we will see how galaxies are magnetically connected to intergalactic space."

"This is a key experiment in preparation for the planned Square Kilometre Array (SKA) that should tell us how cosmic magnetic fields are generated."

More information: The nature of the low-frequency emission of M51: First observations of a nearby galaxy with LOFAR, by D.D. Mulcahy, A. Horneffer, R. Beck et al., 2014, Astronomy & Astrophysics, DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201424187

SKA and CAASTRO: Forecast Sky bubbling with exploding stars

It is hard to imagine that any astronomical phenomenon could escape our latest and most powerful telescopes, but an international research team has now forecast some of the exotic discoveries that will only be able to be studied with the forthcoming Square Kilometre Array (SKA).

Giancarlo Ghirlanda

The team, led by Dr Giancarlo Ghirlanda at the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) in Italy and including CAASTRO members Dr Davide Burlon and Dr Tara Murphy from the University of Sydney, has calculated that the SKA will reveal the lingering footprints of tens of thousands of enigmatic cosmic explosions known as "gamma-ray bursts".

Davide Burlon

"With current telescopes, we see a bright gamma-ray burst somewhere in the Universe around once per day, but new radio telescopes will soon be able to see an afterglow of the explosion after the initial burst has faded away," explains CAASTRO postdoctoral researcher Dr Burlon.

"This afterglow can generally take weeks to gradually decay and teaches us incredible amounts about both the initial explosion and its neighbourhood."

The catch is that a gamma-ray burst is not an explosion that we can see from all directions but is comprised of a very narrow, energetic jet, so we need to be looking down the barrel of the jet at the right time.

Otherwise it is invisible, equivalent to only seeing the beam of a laser pointer when it points directly at us.

The radio afterglow should be visible from any direction though and for long periods of time, even if we missed the burst.

Tara Murphy

These afterglows without a burst are known as "orphan" afterglows, they're a phenomenon that astronomers have until now been looking for without success.

"From the rate at which we detect gamma-ray bursts, we were able to predict that with the power of a sensitive new telescope like the SKA, orphan afterglows should be seen 700 times more often than their gamma-ray bursts." says Dr Burlon.

"The unprecedented sensitivity and wide field-of view of the SKA means that orphan afterglows should be visible for months or even years before eventually disappearing, bubbling across the sky more than ten thousand times per year."

Of course, the SKA's view of the sky will be full of all sorts of objects and events, such as supernova explosions and flaring black holes that are more common than orphan afterglows.

"In this new era of radio astronomy, one of the challenges will be to disentangle these different classes of radio sources." says Dr Tara Murphy, CAASTRO Associate Investigator and project leader of the "Variables and Slow Transients (VAST)" survey with the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP).

The SKA will join the Australian SKA precursor telescope ASKAP and the South African SKA precursor MeerKAT in painting an entirely new picture of the "radio sky".

"The SKA will not only allow us to finally see these orphan afterglows but help us understand how gamma-ray bursts (GRB) produce such powerful, narrow jets and will cast new light on the big question of just what causes gamma-ray bursts in the first place," concludes Dr Ghirlanda.

More information: G. Ghirlanda, D. Burlon, G. Ghisellini, R. Salvaterra, M. G. Bernardini, S. Campana, S. Covino, P. D'Avanzo, V. D'Elia, A. Melandri, T. Murphy, L. Nava, S. D. Vergani, G. Tagliaferri: "GRB orphan afterglows in present and future radio transient surveys" in The Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia (PASA). arXiv:1402.6338 [astro-ph.HE] arxiv.org/abs/1402.6338

SKA South Africa: MeerKAT telescope foundations complete

The 64th and final foundation for the MeerKAT telescope antenna was poured yesterday (Tuesday, February 11th, 2014) at South Africa's SKA site in the Karoo. 

Close to 5 000 m³ of concrete and more than 570 tons of steel were used to construct the foundations over the last nine months.

MeerKAT is the South African precursor to the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope, to be built in Africa and in Australia.

The SKA Project is an international enterprise to build the largest radio telescope in the world.

"The completion of the foundations and the soon-to-be completed first antenna represents a major milestone on building of the MeerKAT which will become an integral part of the SKA project," says Derek Hanekom, South Africa's Minister of Science and Technology.

"I am very pleased with the progress and the quality of the work that our scientists and engineers are delivering on this challenging assignment and wish them well with the enormous task ahead of meeting the tight schedule in the next two years."

"The foundations were constructed to stringent specifications to ensure that the antennas will be exceptionally stable," said Tracy Cheetham, general manager for infrastructure and site operations at SKA South Africa.

"Even at wind gusts of up to 69 km/h scientists must be able to point the dishes at distant celestial objects in an exact manner, and the antennas must be able to survive wind speeds of up to 144 km/h".

To meet these stability requirements, each foundation consists of eight steel-reinforced concrete piles at depths of between 5 to 10 m, depending on the local soil conditions.

A square slab of concrete (5.2 m x 5.2 m, and 1.25 m thick) rests on top of the piles to add further stability.

The 32 "holding down" bolts are pre-assembled in a circle to form a steel ring cage, or so-called "bird's nest", into which the concrete is cast.

All other MeerKAT infrastructure should be complete by the end of March this year. "We are on the last leg now," said Cheetham, adding that finishing touches are underway in the Karoo Array Processing Building (KAPB) and the power facility.

The KABP, a specialised underground bunker protected from radio frequency interference, will house all the data processing racks and the power and back-up equipment required for MeerKAT.

The primary focus for the next two months will be on verifying that all infrastructure functions according to the required specifications.

Testing involves cold and hot commissioning - Cheetham explains: "During cold commissioning the power is connected without switching on the equipment. During hot commissioning the machines are turned on and tested for a period of time."

Cheetham also said the ducting for the fibre optic cable has been completed, so all that is left now is for the fibre optic contractor, Plessey, to pull through and connect the cable.

MeerKAT facts & figures:

• Each MeerKAT antenna will be 19.5 m high.
• Each reflector (or dish) will be 13.5 x 16 m.
• Each complete antenna (base, pedestal and dish) will weigh 42 tons.
• The configuration (placement) of the anntennas is determined by the science objectives of the telescope:
• 48 foundations are in the core area which is approximately 1 km in diameter;
• The longest distance between any two antennas (the so-called baseline) is 8 km.
• MeerKAT will be the most sensitive radio telescope in the southern hemisphere until the SKA comes online. 
• Once all 64 antennas are operational, the instrument will be sensitive enough to pick up a cell phone signal from Saturn!
• Leading radio astronomy teams around the globe have already signed up to use the instrument as soon as it is ready. 
• The 64 MeerKAT antennas will later also become part of the much larger SKA telescope which is co-hosted between South Africa and Australia.

Murchison Widefield Array: Square Kilometre Array precursor debuts

Credit: mwatelescope.org

Solar storms, space junk and the formation of the Universe are about to be seen in an entirely new way with the start of operations today by the $51 million Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) radio telescope.

The first of three international precursors to the $2 billion Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope, the MWA is located in a remote pocket of outback Western Australia.

It is the result of an international project led by Curtin University and was officially turned on this morning by Australia's Science and Research Minister, Senator Kim Carr.

Using leading edge technology, the MWA will become an eye on the sky, acting as an early warning system that will potentially help to save billions of dollars as it steps up observations of the Sun to detect and monitor massive solar storms.

It will also investigate a unique concept which will see stray FM radio signals used to track dangerous space debris.

The MWA will also give scientists an unprecedented view into the first billion years of the Universe, enabling them to look far into the past by studying radio waves that are more than 13 billion years old.

This major field of study has the potential to revolutionise the field of astrophysics.

Steven Tingay

"This collaboration between some of astronomy's greatest minds has resulted in the creation of a groundbreaking facility," Director of the MWA and Professor of Radio Astronomy at Curtin University, Steven Tingay said.

"Right now we are standing at the frontier of astronomical science. Each of these programs has the potential to change our understanding about the Universe."

The development and commissioning of the MWA, the most powerful low frequency radio telescope in the Southern Hemisphere, is the outcome of nearly nine years' work by an international consortium of 13 institutions across four countries (Australia, USA, India and New Zealand).

The detailed observations will be used by scientists to hunt for explosive and variable objects in the Milky Way such as black holes and exploding stars, as well as to create the most comprehensive survey of the Southern Hemisphere sky at low radio frequencies.

From today, regular data will be captured through the entirely static telescope which spans a three kilometre area at the CSIRO's Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory, future home to the SKA.

The data will be processed 800 kilometres away at the $80 million Pawsey High Performance Computing Centre for SKA Science, in Perth, carried there on a link provided by the NBN and enabled by AARNet. The MWA will be the Pawsey Centre's first large-scale customer.

Nine major research programs were announced at the launch, with more than 700 scientists across four continents awaiting the information the telescope has now begun to capture.

"Given the quality of the data obtained during the commissioning process and the vast areas of study that will be investigated, we are expecting to see preliminary results in as little as three months' time," Professor Tingay said.

"This is an exciting prospect for anyone who's ever looked up at the sky and wondered how the Universe came to be.

"The MWA has and will continue to lift the bar even higher for the SKA."

Peter Hall

Under Professor Tingay and fellow colleague Professor Peter Hall's guidance, Curtin University has been awarded a $5 million grant by the Australian Government to participate in the SKA pre-construction program over the next three years, with the MWA's unique insight being used to develop a low frequency radio telescope that is expected to be 50 times more sensitive.

The MWA project recognises the Wadjarri Yamatji people as the traditional owners of the site on which the MWA is built and thanks the Wadjarri Yamatji people for their support, as well as that of Astronomy Australia Limited.
Australia.

South Africa's New Radio Telescope SKA Reveals Giant Outbursts from Binary Star System

An artist's impression of the Circinus X-1 system showing the binary (double) star system. 

Two stars orbit each other every 16.5 days in an elliptical orbit. 

The small white sphere is the neutron star - an extremely dense and compact remnant of an exploded star, only about 20 km in diameter. 

The red sphere is an ordinary star - the companion star in this system. 

When the two stars are at their closest, the neutron star pulls material from its companion star. 

An accretion disk (the blue disk) forms around the neutron star, containing the matter that is sucked from the ordinary star. 

Powerful jets of material (the orange rays) then blast out from the neutron star at close to the speed of light, causing powerful flares in radio frequencies. 

Credit: Image courtesy of University of Southampton /SKA South Africa

An international team of astronomers have reported the first scientific results from the Karoo Array Telescope (KAT-7) in South Africa, the pathfinder radio telescope for the $3 billion global Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project.

The results appear in the latest issue of the international astronomical journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS).

Using the seven-dish KAT-7 telescope and the 26 m radio telescope at the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory (HartRAO), astronomers have observed a neutron star system known as Circinus X-1 as it fires energetic matter from its core into the surrounding system in extensive, compact `jets' that flare brightly, details of which are visible only in radio waves.

Journal Reference: 
R. P. Armstrong, R.P. Fender, G.D. Nicolson, S. Ratcliffe, M. Linares, J.Horrell, L. Richter, M. P. E. Schurch, M. Coriat, P. Woudt, J. Jonas, R. Booth, B. Fanaroff. A return to strong radio flaring by Circinus X-1 observed with the Karoo Array Telescope test array KAT-7. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2013

SKA Super telescope costs Skyrocket: Risk Management Failure

The estimated cost of the first construction phase of the world's largest radio telescope has jumped to 400 million euros ($530 million), the project's director general said Tuesday.

The increase of 50 million euros takes six years of accumulated inflation into account, and the figure could escalate further once additional costs of splitting the project between Africa and Australia are factored in.

This sudden and dramatic increase in the costings can only be attributed to poor financial risk management and a failure to complete a stringent risk assessment at the outset.

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will be the world's largest and most sensitive radio telescope, with thousands of receptors spread over an area of a square kilometre (0.4 square miles).

Once completed, the project will allow astronomers to study distant galaxies in their quest to answer some fundamental questions about our Universe -- how it began, why it is expanding and whether it contains life beyond our planet.

The SKA will be able to detect a radio signal from a planet 50 light years away.

"What we are undergoing over the coming months is a review of how much Phase 1 will cost," Philip Diamond told AFP by phone from the English city of Manchester, where the SKA scheme is headquartered.

"What we are working towards is... presenting to the board at their July board meeting our informed estimates of the cost of the first phase of the SKA," he said.

"The board will then look at that, decide if they like it, and this will be part of the process then of going out to raise money from governments for the construction."

The project's original cost estimate, 1.5 billion euros in total for phases one and two, was made in 2007, and "we decided we should update the numbers to 2013 euros", said Diamond.

Australia Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP): Fastest Radio Telescope on Earth

Australia is now home to the world's fastest radio telescope with the launch Friday of the $152 million Australia Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), which experts said would allow a more expansive survey of the universe - both known and what remains for scientists to discover s.

The new scientific research site is located in the Shire of Murchison, a sparsely populated area in Western Australia that astronomers have picked out because of the virtual absence of man-made radio signals.

The location is ideal because it is 'radio quiet', or lacks man-made radio signals that would interfere with the antennas picking up astronomical radio signals.

The ASKAP telescope is projected to improve on the previous achievements of similar facilities, giving researchers and scientists more universe space to cover with less time required.

Putting into perspective the speed and efficiency that comes with the ASKAP, scientists said only five minutes will be spent to fully observe Milky Way's neighbouring galaxy, Centaurus A.

Earlier works on the Centaurus A were achieved after two years of careful observations that were aided by thousands of hours of computer analysis and the poring over of hundreds of images, the news agency added.

Now with use of phased array feeds coming from 36 antennas spread over an area of about 50,000 square kilometres, future scientific researchers and observations have become more specific and accurate, scientists said.

Australia will host both the low frequency component of the SKA – which will image the birth of the first stars in the universe - and a world leading survey facility based on CSIRO’s revolutionary Phased Array Feed technology.

Both of these components of the telescope are right at the cutting-edge of radio astronomy technology and data management and will attract some of the best technological brains in the world to Australia.

These well-coordinated radio waves will provide clear snap shots of what man aims to discover out there to better comprehend the universe, National Scientific Research Organisation (NSRO) project director Brian Boyle said in a news briefing held earlier this week.

"Radio waves tell us unique things about the cosmos, about the gas from which stars were formed, and about exotic objects, pulsars and quasars, that really push the boundaries of our knowledge of the physical laws in the universe," Mr Boyle said.

What the new facility has delivered is for astronomers to better understand our own universe and the 'others' on its outer realms, he added.

Over the next few years, the NSRO is gunning to gain more information on the force that led to the creation of Milky Way and its constant expansion, decode the mystery-laden black holes and investigate further on pulsars.

It could be that the new ASKAP telescope would eventually prove that 'man is not alone' after all, Mr Boyle suggested.

Square Kilometer Array (SKA): Organisation opts for dual site solution

After a tense few months that has had many in Australia and South Africa anxiously awaiting word on whether their particular site will be chosen to host the world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope, the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) Organisation has finally made its decision.

It’s good news for both bids, with the organization opting for a dual-site solution that will see the SKA telescope shared between Australia and South Africa.

The joint Australia/New Zealand bid and a South African- led bid were left competing after sites in Argentina and Chile were ruled out in 2006.

However, hopes in the Australian camp were dealt a blow earlier this year when it was reported that a confidential report from the SKA Site Advisory Committee favored the South African-led bid.

While an official announcement was expected on April 4, 2012, the SKA Organization instead decided to postpone the announcement while a working group was set up to examine the two sites further, along with the option of a dual site solution.

Noting that both sites had their own advantages and disadvantages, and wishing to be inclusive, the SKA Organisation has now revealed it has agreed on a dual-site solution that will allow the project to take advantage of investments already made by the bidding nations.

The decision will see two of the three SKA receiver components built in Africa, with the third to be constructed in Australia.

The MeerKAT radio telescope, which is currently under construction in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa and will consist of 64 dishes measuring 13.5 m (44 ft) in diameter, will be used to supplement the SKA Phase I dish array, providing the majority of the collection area for the SKA telescope.

The majority of SKA dishes in Phase I will be built in Southern Africa, as will all the dishes and mid frequency aperture arrays for Phase II of the SKA.

Meanwhile, in Australia, SKA dishes will be combined with the 36 dishes of the almost completed Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) array in Western Australia. All of the low frequency aperture array antennas for Phase I and II will also be built in Australia and New Zealand.

When completed, the SKA will have a total collecting area of approximately one square kilometer (0.38 square miles), with thousands of receptors extending to distances of up to 3,000 km (1,864 miles) from its center.

It will also generate astronomical amounts of data – with each dish transmitting around 160 Gigabits of data per second to a central processor – posing some pretty intensive computing demands to be addressed by the DOME project.

Boasting 50 times the sensitivity and 10,000 times the survey speed of the best current-day telescopes, the SKA will extend the range of the observable universe, while addressing questions in the fields of astrophysics, fundamental physics, cosmology and particle astrophysics.

Construction of Phase I of the SKA is due to start in 2016, with initial observations set for 2019 and full operation scheduled by 2024.

Source: SKA Organisation

Square Kilometre ARRAY (SKA): Astron and IBM to Build Low-Power Exascale Supercomputer

IBM and Astron, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, have collaborated to research on exascale computer systems that will help explore the origins of the universe.

The low-power exascale computer systems are targeted for the international Square Kilometre Array (SKA), an international project by Astron to build the world's largest and most sensitive radio telescope.

The supercomputer will collect data from the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), which requires processors that are a million times faster than today's fastest computers.

The supercomputer will reportedly be faster than the current world's fastest supercomputer, the K, that has 700,000 processor cores and a peak performance of 10 petaflops (thousand trillion floating point operations per second) - an exascale computer would be 100 times faster than that.

The initial 32.9 million euro project named Dome is a five-year collaboration with Astron and upon completion of building the telescope by 2024, it will be used to explore evolving galaxies, dark matter and even the very origins of the universe - dating back more than 13 billion years.

Ton Engbersen, IBM Research - Zurich explained: "If you take the current global daily Internet traffic and multiply it by two**, you are in the range of the data set that the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope will be collecting every day."

"This is Big Data Analytics to the extreme. With Dome we will embark on one of the most data intensive science projects ever planned, which will eventually have much broader applications beyond radio astronomy research," he added.

Scientists at Astron and IBM will also investigate the advanced accelerators and 3D stacked chips for more energy-efficient computing. They will also research on technologies to optimize large data transfers, as well as high-performance storage systems.

"Large research infrastructures like the SKA require extremely powerful computer systems to process all the data. The only acceptable way to build and operate these systems is to dramatically reduce their power consumption," said Marco de Vos, Managing Director of Astron.

"Dome gives us unique opportunities to try out new approaches in Green Supercomputing. This will be beneficial for society at large as well," he added.

Scientists from both IBM and Astron will work at the newly established Astron & IBM Center for Exascale Technology in Drenthe, the Netherlands. The construction of the super telescope is expected to begin in 2017.

Square Kilometre Array (SKA): South Africa wins science panel's backing

A scientific panel has narrowly recommended South Africa over Australia as the best site for the proposed Square Kilometre Array (SKA), an enormous radio telescope.

But the project's member states have yet to make a final decision on where the telescope will go.

A source familiar with the site selection process confirmed that the panel had indeed made a decision, but added that it was a close call. "This is not an enormous preference for one over the other," he says.

The US$2.1 billion SKA radio telescope will be made up of some 3,000 dishes, each 15 metres in diameter.

It will try to answer big questions about the early universe: how the first elements heavier than helium formed, for example, and how the first galaxies coalesced.

The telescope is so sensitive that it could even pick up television signals from distant worlds, something that might aid in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Background
Since 2006, South Africa has competed against a joint bid from Australia and New Zealand to host the project.

The South African site has some compelling advantages: construction costs are lower, and it sits at higher altitude. But the Australian site would be cheaper to insure, and is less likely to be encroached on by future development. The margin in favour of the winner was extremely narrow, the source says.

Final Bid process
Members of SKA's board will meet on 19 March in Manchester, UK, to discuss the scientific panel's recommendations.

The closed meeting will also provide the two bidders with the opportunity to contest any of the panel's recommendations. After the meeting, SKA's board write a commentary to accompany the recommendation, which will inform the final decision.

According to the source, because the two sites are so close in merit, both are still in contention. China, Italy, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, the SKA's voting board members, could yet decide either way.

It is even possible that the array could be shared between both nations, though this would likely increase the construction costs.

A final site decision could come as soon as 4 April, when a meeting of the board is tentatively scheduled in Amsterdam.

Nature ref: doi:10.1038/nature.2012.10205

SKA: The Square Kilometer Radio Telescope Array - Australia

The Square Kilometer Array (SKA), the world's most powerful radio telescope in development, may help make contact with aliens, if there is any, Australia's leading astronomer Fred Watson said on Tuesday.

The SKA is a global collaboration of 20 countries, which is aimed to provide answers to fundamental questions about origin and evolution of the Universe.

It will be able to survey the sky more than 10,000 times faster than ever before. With receiving stations extending out to distance of 3,000 km from a concentrated central core, it will continue radio astronomy's tradition of providing the highest resolution images in all astronomy.

Professor Watson, astronomer in charge at the Australian Astronomical Observatory at Coonabarabran in New South Wales, said the SKA will reveal more about the origins of the universe.

"It's about asking the big questions," The Australia Associated Press quoted Professor Watson as saying Tuesday.

Watson said, "The SKA will be by far the most sensitive radio telescope ever built. It will have the potential to reveal all kinds of things ranging from the possibility of picking up signals from aliens, if they exist."

It will look at the early universe, trying to work out how galaxies were formed, said Watson. The SKA would also investigate the "mysterious stuff" called dark matter, which permeates four- fifths of the universe, and possibly reveal how dark matter helped the formation of stars.

The Murchison region in the Western Australia outback is vying with a site in South Africa for the SKA, with a group of international scientists expected to make a final decision on the site for the SKA in 2012.

Some clues as to the location may be revealed following the final international SKA forum meeting in Banff, Canada held on July 3-8.

Construction of the SKA is scheduled to begin in 2016 for initial observations by 2019 and full operation by 2024.

Square Kilometer Array: The international radio telescope for the 21st century

Square Kilometer Array: The international radio telescope for the 21st century ScienceBlog.com

On 30 and 31 March a strategic international workshop on the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will seek to identify the major economical and societal benefits of large-scale scientific research infrastructure investments.

The SKA is a USD 1 billion+ international project to create a radio telescope incorporating a receiving surface of a million square metres, fifty times larger than the biggest receiving surface now in existence. This huge surface will be composed of many small antennas, divided into a dense inner core array which becomes more diffuse with increasing radius.

The SKA was conceived as a new international project to meet the future needs of radio astronomers. It will be use to address some of the more fundamental questions in contemporary physics and astronomy, including the nature of the first stars in the Universe, the cosmic history of the Universe, the nature of Dark Matter and Dark Energy, theories of gravity and black holes and the origin of cosmic magnetism.

Beside the major scientific value of this project, experts expect large benefits in terms of direct economic and indirect societal impacts, such as boosting technological learning, capacity-building, socio-economic benefit as well as stimulation of market gains.

Organised by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) with the support of INAF (Italian National Institute of Astrophysics), this strategic workshop is aimed at improving the understanding of boundary conditions and exchanging best practices that will positively influence SKA policy.