Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Australia and South Africa To Share the Square Kilometer Array

Posted by Soulskill on from the you-get-weekends-but-i-get-holidays dept.

ananyo writes "The battle for the world's largest radio telescope has ended in a draw. As an earlier Slashdot story suggested, South Africa and Australia are to split the Square Kilometre Array, a €1.5 billion (US$1.9 billion) project made up of 3,000 15-meter-wide dishes and an even larger number of simple antennas. The decision was announced at a meeting outside of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, following a vote by SKA's international board."

13 of 79 comments (clear)

  1. What? by durrr · · Score: 4, Funny

    So do we average out the proposed locations and put it in the middle of the ocean then?

  2. You know negotiations succeeded when... by schitso · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...each side comes out equally unhappy.

  3. Really? by Zaldarr · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You know, you could just give it to one of us. We can take bad news. What the hell even is this? Some kind of game children played in the 90's where everybody won? I was under the impression that we were doing science.

    --
    I write professional videogame reviews! http://www.digitallydownloaded.net/
    1. Re:Really? by L4t3r4lu5 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Some kind of game children played in the 90's where everybody won?

      There's no I in "team", but there's two in "Winning." You think that means we both win? Wrong. I win twice. Now give me that Silver medal.

      --
      Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
    2. Re:Really? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      Australia was the better site. Very stable country, low crime and secure location, virtually guaranteed not to get significant radio pollution nearby. The South African site was seen as the politically correct, charity "we're doing something good for the Africans" one.

  4. So it's a half-kilometer array? by cpu6502 · · Score: 5, Informative

    No. They are splitting the frequencies, which is a pretty good idea: "Most of the subsequent telescope dishes and mid-frequency aperture arrays will be built in Southern Africa, while the low-frequency aperture array antennas will be positioned in Australia." - One kilometer of MF and one kilometer of LF reception.

    --
    My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
  5. Why build one by arcite · · Score: 2

    When you can build two for double the money? Science won today my friends.

  6. Political correctness ties with science by onyxruby · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It is very disappointing to see that political correctness has been allowed to 'tie' with science. How is this any different than things like government quotas for hiring police officers and fire fighters that set different standards for passing the tests based on your race? Science should be blind to things like this, if the best site was in Australia, it should have gone there, if the best site was in South Africa it should have gone there.

    1. Re:Political correctness ties with science by TapeCutter · · Score: 2

      The two sites are both as good as it gets. We now have two telescopes each concentrating on a seperate part of the spectrum. Cooperation between the two telescopes will overlap into other areas of science and engineering, spreading hands on experience as well as ideas. I think it's a great outcome for science and I really can't see any reason to bitch about the politics that has brought the project this close to shovels in the ground.

      Disclaimer: I'm an Aussie taxpayer who would just like to see it up and running. Solomen's wisdom does not apply here, I'm happy to see the baby cut in half if it means it gets twice as much love. :).

      --
      And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
  7. Name by MikeMacK · · Score: 2

    It's to be called the "Good Day Array"...

    1. Re:Name by TapeCutter · · Score: 4, Funny

      But we will call it "Bruce" to avoid confusion.

      --
      And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
    2. Re:Name by RivenAleem · · Score: 3, Funny

      Wasted a perfect opportunity to call it "Wisdom of Solomon Array"

  8. Re:How is it going to work? by Millennium · · Score: 2

    How is this going to work? When an astronomical object is visible to a telescope in South Africa, its not going to be visible to a telescope in Australia.

    That's not actually the case: they're close enough geographically that for any given object in the sky, there is a window of time when it will be visible from both regions (day/night doesn't matter, since the telescopes don't use visible light). That object will certainly be in a different part of the sky in each region, but both should still be able to focus on it during the time when it's visible to both.

    What this does do is shrink the aforementioned window of time, because the object has to be visible from both spots or the scheme doesn't work. Whether or not this is a really problem depends on what they use the telescope for. Evidently they don't think it will be an unacceptable thing.

    My personal gripe with this is more from an engineering perspective than a scientific one (since I don't know enough about the science to judge one country as a particularly better location than another). The design didn't call for the thing to be split, much less between two continents. A cross-continental instrument could be interesting, but if they were going to do that then they should have designed for it. As it stands, I fail to see how this can possibly do anything but harm to the instrument.