Slashdot Mirror
Big Blue Designing Chip to Decode the Big Bang
Jerry Beth writes "IBM is working with European astronomy organization Astron to design a chip that will be used to help gather billions-of-years-old radio signals from deep space in the hopes of learning more about the origins of the universe. From the article: 'It's part of Astron's Square Kilometer Array (SKA) radio telescope project. The SKA will be linked to millions of antennas collecting radio signals from space. The antennas will be spread over a large surface area of the globe but, in the aggregate, they will form a square kilometer's worth of collection area. [...] The microprocessors will essentially help the antennas capture the signals, filter out extraneous data and then convert the signals into data. Astrophysicists will then analyze the data to look for patterns. The weakest signals are the prize in this project, because they will be the oldest.'"
Even if a chip could be designed to decode the Big Bang, we already know the answer: "Nothing for you to see here. Please move along."
IT ALL TRACES BACK TO GOD! Ok, flamebait aside. How long before we actually find something? I mean space is the original Energizer Bunny, it keeps going, and going, and going......