‘Are we alone in the universe?’: Work begins in Western Australia on world’s most powerful radio telescope

More than 100,000 antennas will be built on Wajarri country, enabling astronomers to peek billions of years back to the ‘cosmic dawn’

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Construction of the world’s largest radio astronomy observatory, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), has officially begun in Australia after three decades in development.

A huge intergovernmental effort, the SKA has been hailed as one of the biggest scientific projects of this century. It will enable scientists to look back to early in the history of the universe when the first stars and galaxies were formed. It will also be used to investigate dark energy and why the universe is expanding, and to potentially search for extraterrestrial life.

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from World news | The Guardian https://ift.tt/FOaAtRw