Why it's a Mind Blow: The announcement came down last week. The SKA will be constructed at sites in Namibia, Botswana, Mozambique, Kenya, Zambia, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, and even the Indian Ocean islands of Mauritius and Madagascar. The 1.5 billion Euro project will form the most powerful radio telescope on our world and, at this scale, perhaps well beyond.
Now, I've pummeled you with a fair bit of telescope news over the last two months. I want you to know that it's not for lack of consideration of other topics. It just so happens that telescope news is coming fast and furious, and I honestly believe it is the most mind blowing development on the planet today.
Why? Quite simply, the SKA will be unimaginably powerful. Spread over thousands of kilometers in the southern hemisphere, it will be able to observe the universe at its very earliest moments. It will be able to precisely map the location and movement of the billion galaxies closest to our own, furthering our understanding of dark matter and perhaps refining Einstein's explanation of gravity.
How big is the SKA? Well, put it this way: it makes the Very Large Array in New Mexico look like something Galileo built in his garage. The very mechanics of reality will be observed in magnificent detail, to say nothing of the implications for the search for extraterrestrial life. By the time the SKA is completed in 2025, we will have a long list of candidate star systems, and this array will give us the power to listen in for civilizations even less developed than our own. First contact, it seems, may be a call placed from Planet Earth!
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18194984
I wonder what Galileo would have put in his garage...
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