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.'"

Comments

Side jobs

[LiquidCoooled]

Could this be used to decode and filter out the content on myspace and find intelligent life?

42

[hansamurai]

They should just call it Deep Thought and get back to us in 7.5 million years.

Re:Look and calculate all you want

[lucabrasi999]

Why can't we just theorize that time is not finite - there's no beginning and no end.........Seriously, someone explain to me why time MUST have a beginning? Can't we just accept some things as being infinite?

The reason science exists is that some people cannot just "accept" things. They must ask why. They must have proof to back up their assumptions. From what I understand about the Big Bang, these scientists have reason to believe that time DOES have a beginning.

If there are scientists with evidence that time is not finite, then it would be helpful if someone provided a link.

A better headline

[Chemisor]

Big Blue Building a Baffling, Buggy, and Bloated Behemoth Befitting Betterment of the Big Bang theories.

Re:How else can it be applied?

[stevesliva]

Then it brings up the other question: What else can this processor be used for? If it needs to be produced in the millions to make it financially viable, where else will it be sold?

Nope, IBM offers a SiGe foundry process. If you pay for the wafers, IBM will make them, whether you want 10 or 10,000. Yes, you may be designing a chip for a limited design run, but you're also designing a telescope that you'll only build once...

Intelligent Life and MySpace

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't the two mutually exclusive?

Re:Is it just me, or is this a waste?

[Red Jesus]

There are three ideas here and each is worth addressing individually:

At some point, doesn't it make sense to stop spending Billions of dollars of taxpayer money on Big Bang research?

At some point, yes. Diminishing marginal returns eventually bring down everything. But I wouldn't say we've gone too far; this program doesn't sound like it would cost anywhere near a billion dollars and the chips will probably be useful in other weak-signal applications.

How much does it benefit us to know what happened .3 seconds after the big bang vs. 3 seconds vs. 10 million years?

Newton couldn't have developed his universal law of gravitation without the observations of Galileo and Kepler that planets are attracted to each other. But now we use his law of gravity all the time. Relativity drew on the results of experiments that involved light reflecting back from the moons of Jupiter; now we need relativity to calibrate the electron guns in our televsion sets. Our understanding of nuclear physics got a huge boost from studies of the stars and the fusion processes going on out there. And nuclear power (and weapons) have impacted society in a grand way. How much does it benefit us to know what happened 0.3 seconds after the Big Bang? It helps us because the closer we get to the Big Bang, the closer we get to observing quantum gravity (in whatever form it takes). And while quantum gravity might not seem terribly useful right now, I have little doubt that it will have useful applications eventually. Basic research is important.

I'd rather see all this money fund research into advanced propulsion systems, robotics, and solar power technologies that will help us explore the Universe, rather than just gaze at it with ever more powerful equipment.

I can't help thinking "why?". At some point, doesn't it make sense to stop spending Billions of dollars of taxpayer money on Space exploration? After all, if looking at the universe with a cheap telescope is a waste of time, wouldn't going out and touching it in an expensive spaceship be an even bigger waste?

Re:Is it just me, or is this a waste?

[wanerious]

I can't help thinking "why?". At some point, doesn't it make sense to stop spending Billions of dollars of taxpayer money on Big Bang research? How much does it benefit us to know what happened .3 seconds after the big bang vs. 3 seconds vs. 10 million years? I'd rather see all this money fund research into advanced propulsion systems, robotics, and solar power technologies that will help us explore the Universe, rather than just gaze at it with ever more powerful equipment.

Well, I *hope* it's just you. Just like I don't get what makes a cat do particular things from time to time, I don't get people who aren't fundamentally *curious*. Even stipulating that there may *never* be a single practical application or utility derived from cosmology, it speaks poorly for our species if we have the capability to probe our fundamental origins from our little speck in the cosmos but lack the effort. In all cases, when we probe the Universe with more precise instruments, we find mysteries that we not only cannot explain, but that we never before *imagined*. The subtlety and beauty of the Universe demands enough respect for it that we at least peer through the crack in the door.